All posts by s1t3@dM1n

John Preston MA, MBA, LLM

Year: 1952 - 1955
Occupation: Trade Commissioner & Diplomat

John joined the Department of Industries and Commerce (now Trade & Enterprise), and finished his degree studying part time. He was appointed to commissioner/ diplomatic positions in Tokyo, Bagdad, Vienna and Melbourne. Between postings he worked for Trade & Industry and MFAT with his final position Director of Trade Promotion. John then moved to the Commerce Commission as Manager of the Fair Trading Division. He was selected by the Commonwealth Secretariat to serve on the Zimbabwe Competition Authority and for the last ten years worked in London as a consultant to the UK’s Department for International Development, travelling extensively in Africa and Asia.

Dick Joyce BE(Mech)

Year: 1959 - 1963
Occupation: Double Olympic Gold Medallist

As well as gaining a Bachelor of Engineering at Canterbury University Dick earned a Canterbury University blue and a NZ university blue (all in rowing). He became a Registered Engineer in 1972, and is currently a Chartered Professional Engineer and member of IPENZ. He has his own small engineering consulting business and has written books on alternative fuels in light and heavy transport. Dick represented NZ in rowing from 1967 to1972 including two Olympic games in crews that won gold medals the coxed four at Mexico 1968 and the eights at Munich 1972. He has won: N.Z. Championship titles 1967,1968,1969,1970 & 1972 NZ Sportsman of the year as a member of the 8s in 1971 & 1972. The European Champs in1971 in the eights He was a flag bearer at Commonwealth games in 1990 and he has continued to serve as a rowing coach and an administrator. He has coached two NZ Championship winning crews. He was involved in the running of the World Rowing Championships at Lake Karapiro in 1978 and in 2010. He was an inaugural member of the N.Z. Sporting Hall of Fame and inducted into the Porirua Sporting Hall of Fame, 2011. He is the current Past President of the Wellington Rowing Club and he has also been an active skier and member of the Aorangi Ski club administration.

Irihapeti Ramsden PhD, MNZM

Year: 1959 - 1962
Occupation: Nurse, Educator & Scholar

Irihapeti trained as a registered general and obstetric nurse at Wellington Hospital. She worked in a range of areas including general nursing, respiratory medicine and public health before moving into nursing education. She is perhaps best known in Aotearoa and internationally for the development of Cultural Safety – an educational framework for the analysis of power relationships between health professionals and those they serve – the subject of her PhD. Cultural Safety has been part of the New Zealand nursing and midwifery curriculum since 1992 and comprises 20% of the state registration examination for all nurses and midwives. Irihapeti negotiated the foundations for developing a process of ownership of the Cultural Safety curriculum between Otago Polytechnic and Ngai Tahupotiki iwi, an early example of exercising intellectual property rights. The International Council of Nurses, the oldest and largest international professional organization in the health field, representing nurses and nursing in 118 countries, recommended in 1995 that Cultural Safety be included in the education programmes of all national nurses associations. She was a Council member of Lincoln University and sat on a number of other committees including the Health Sponsorship Council, the Ethics Committee and the Maori Health Committee of the Health Research Council of New Zealand, the executive committee of the National Heart Foundation of New Zealand and the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Irihapeti had a long standing interest and involvement in asthma research and asthma service development. She was a member of the Ministerial Maori Asthma Review Team in 1991, and a member of the Maori Committee of the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation of New Zealand. Another area of interest was bioethics. Irihapeti was a Teaching Fellow in Bioethics at the Otago Medical School, Bioethics Research Centre and in 1997 she was appointed as the New Zealand representative to the International Board of Bioethics. Just weeks before her death Irihapeti was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to nursing and Maori health.

Ken Mc Natty PhD, DSc

Year: 1958 - 1962
Occupation: Scientist

Ken started his scientific career at Wallaceville after graduating from Victoria in 1967. He then moved to the University of Edinburgh and gained a PhD in reproductive medicine in 1975. After 3 years of post doctoral study at Harvard he spent two years in the Netherlands as Boerhaave Professor of Reproductive Endocrinology, at the University of Leiden Medical School before returning to Wallaceville and researching reproductive systems for 22 years. He is currently professor of cell biology and biotechnology at Victoria University. Ken has been a speaker at over 70 international conferences and he has organised numerous conferences in both animal and human ovarian and reproductive biology. Ken was Co-inventor of the sheep twinning vaccine Androvax and the fertility drug Ovagen™ – these products have generated over $100 million dollars per annum to the NZ economy. He was leader of the research team and co-discoverer of the BMP15, GDF9 and ALK6 genetic mutations in sheep and the immunisation strategies targeting BMP15 and GDF9 to regulate fertility in mammals. This work led to 6 patents and two new paradigms in reproductive biology. Ken has received many awards and distinctions including the New Zealand Royal Society Pickering Medal (2009) for excellence and innovation in fertility management and animal production; The Shorland Medal from the NZ Association of Scientists (2010) and he is the NZ Representative on The International Human Frontier Science Program Organisation Strasbourg, (2010-2012).

Tagaloatele Peggy Fairbairn – Dunlop PhD, ONZM

Year: 1958 - 1961
Occupation: Education

Peggy has been involved with research and training in Pacific development issues, in particular family relations, women & gender issues, poverty, youth participation in politics, womens informal sector activities for poverty alleviation and micro-credit systems; and human resource development for more than 30 years. Peggy is coordinator of the Pacific regional report for Beijing and the Pacific Platform of Action for Sustainable Development (PPA) and has extensive experience working with government planning departments, NGOs and the private sector. Peggy has worked with most donor and UN agencies and in most Pacific countries. After 25 years in the Pacific (including 15 years at the University of the South Pacific, Peggy returned to NZ in 2006 to take the post of inaugural director of Va’aomanu Pasifika, the Pacific Studies unit at Victoria University. In 2008 she received the Insignia of an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit for services to research on families. In October 2009 she moved to AUT Auckland to become Professor of Pacific Studies. Peggy also coordinates the very successful national Pacific Post Graduate Talanoa seminar by the KAREN access grid.