Darren McGarvie: New trustee for Rotorua X

NEW TRUSTEE: Wallace Revell.

Rotorua X is excited to welcome a new trustee to the board.

Local lawyer Wallace Revell will join us around the boardroom table to help develop our strategic direction.

Rotorua X is a charitable trust with the vision to inspire, educate and help grow the Rotorua business community. We can only do what we do with the direction and support provided by our team of trustees, who give up their time to lead and support our organisation and programmes.

It is a philosophy of Rotorua X to make sure that the board has a diverse mix of skills, experience, age, ethnicity and gender. We believe it is crucial that our board is also representative of our Rotorua X community.

A differentiating factor of our networking group is that 80 per cent of the community is under 45. To continue to engage and attract the younger professionals and business owners we need to make sure that our programmes, events and communications hit the mark for this group.

Wallace will help us do this and adds a whole new skill set and dynamic to the board.

Raised in Tokoroa, Wallace moved to Rotorua after completing his Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts at Victoria University in Wellington. He works at Dowthwaite Law and his practice includes civil, Maori land, family, and employment dispute resolution and litigation, as well as some trust, estate, property, and commercial work.

Wallace is excited to become the youngest member on the board.

He sees Rotorua X has two roles in the Rotorua community.

The first is business development, whether that is helping new businesses launch and grow or existing businesses to become better or bigger.

Second is helping Rotorua overcome its "deprived" status by promoting business growth which will hopefully translate into more employment through inspiring organisations to improve their capability and become more sustainable.

"Rotorua X provides a different style of networking and training for Rotorua businesses. I was really attracted to how they show leadership to the business community through inspiration.

"You go to an event not to hear about a company's product or service but the person's journey to success," he said.

"After attending several events I realised that I wanted to get involved with Rotorua X rather than just have the benefit of its networking events and programmes," he said. "I wanted to give rather than just take.

"I am looking forward to being a part of Rotorua X and contributing to the betterment of the Rotorua business community," Wallace says.

- Darren McGarvie is the chairman of the Rotorua X Charitable Trust.