Our Club President

LIEUTENANT COLONEL JIM DRYBURGH

Jim Dryburgh was born, brought up and educated in Argyll on the West Coast of Scotland. He has completed over 34 year’s service with the British and NZ Armies. He joined the UK Army as a sixteen year old Army Apprentice in 1975 and trained for two and a half years as a telecommunications technician at the UK Army Apprentice College in Harrogate. He was identified towards the end of this training, as a candidate for commissioning and was fast tracked for entry to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Jim graduated from the Academy in 1978 as a Lieutenant in the Royal Corps of Signals.

Since commissioning Jim’s UK Army service has taken him to West Germany and Berlin, prior to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, along with some stints at home in the UK he has served in Cyprus, Belize, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium. As a NATO officer between 1995 and 2002 he was involved in frequent NATO international visits to USA, Canada, France, Italy, Denmark, the Czech and Slovak Republics and Greece. He was the first commanding officer of a multi national NATO Signals Battalion which had soldiers drawn from ten different nations, a challenge which he still sees as one of the greatest highlights of his career to date.

In October 2005 Jim retired from the British Army as a Lieutenant Colonel and took a post with the New Zealand Army General Staff as a Major, moving his young family to build a new home in Paraparaumu on the Kapiti Coast. Jim was promoted back to Lieutenant Colonel, by Chief of the Army Major General Lou Gardner, in December 2008.

Though correct to assume that Jim is a military communications and information technology specialist he is very much a generalist when it comes to management and leadership. Before leaving UK Jim studied for, and was awarded, a post graduate diploma in operational management. He has developed a range of transferable management skills to fit any general management planning or relationship based occupation. He is at his best when involved with building, motivating and leading teams towards a common goal.

Jim lives on the Kapiti Coast in Paraparaumu Beach, with his partner Heather and their children George 17, Sophie 13, Flora 10 and Holly 9. He joined Rotary in 2005 and has been on the Directing Board since 2006, he is a keen charity fundraiser and event organiser. Since coming to NZ he has become a keen, if not over successful, fly fisherman. His other interests include Scottish history and culture, reading, movies and the art, life and culture of the Kapiti Coast.