She was the first woman president of Engineering New Zealand, and was elected a Distinguished Fellow in 2005.
[1][2] Kivell was one of six women in a class of 600 students, and later described her experiences as "very difficult....almost brutalising" due to overt and unconscious discrimination.
She completed an MBA in 1989, and worked in tertiary education at Unitech Institute of Technology and the University of Otago.
[4] Kivell has served on the council for the Centre for Advanced Engineering and International Accreditation New Zealand, and was a director of the Worley Group Ltd. From 1999 until 2004 she was a board member of the Land Transport Safety Authority.
[4] Kivell was Chair of the Auckland branch of IPENZ (now Engineering New Zealand) from 1984, and then joined the national governance board in 1988.