Rohm Dixon will start a job in corporate finance at PwC in Christchurch next year after he finishes a full immersion te reo Māori course.
Rohm, who will be part of next week’s Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury (UC) autumn graduation celebrations, has already found a role in corporate finance with PwC in Christchurch.
He says he went to university because he wanted to help others, particularly young Māori and Pacific people, become more knowledgeable about business and understand how to make their money work for them.
“I’ve seen people go into working in jobs where they actually make good money, but they have no kind of idea of how to invest it, how to save it, which is so fundamental to building your wealth.
“Even at high school I realised that a lot of my peers, particularly those from poorer communities, don’t have basic financial literacy skills that other people are fortunate to have, and I thought, ‘I could really make some change in this,’. and that’s what took me to uni, to educate myself. In the future, I'm keen to teach those communities more about financial literacy.
“I can see there's a huge gap between the people who know how to manage their money, and the people who don’t.”
Rohm (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāi Te Rangi), is from Rotorua, and studied te reo Māori for a minor as part of his degree at UC. He is currently completing a full immersion te reo Māori course in Tauranga. He says PwC was very supportive of him becoming fluent in the language and agreed to wait until 2027 for him to start his new job in Christchurch.
His goal is to become the first in his family to confidently speak te reo Māori. “I’m doing it so I can teach my kids the language and bring te reo back into our family again.”
While studying at UC he founded a student club called Te Mana Pounamu which aims to empower and support Māori and Pacific commerce students to become leaders in the business field.
“I really wanted to provide a space where we could welcome Māori and Pacific students into the Bachelor of Commerce and the UC Business School. We also wanted to show examples of Māori and Pacific people who are thriving in the business world. We invited people to come in for speaker sessions, so students would feel inspired to create those kinds of opportunities for themselves.”
He says membership of the group is continuing to grow and he feels like he’s left “a bit of a legacy”.
Rohm was entrepreneurial even as a child, raising calves on his family’s lifestyle block to sell when he was eight or nine, and taking part in the Young Enterprise Scheme at Rotorua Boys High School with a café that provided teachers with coffee delivered within five minutes.
“I’ve always been business-minded and I ultimately want to own some of my own businesses. I don't know what that's going to look like or how I'm going to get there, but I'm sure opportunities will open up.”
He had two internships at PwC in the last two years of his degree and says they were invaluable. “It's good to put some of the theory to work in a way, and it was good for me to find out this is what I want to do.”
He majored in finance and economics and says it has led to amazing opportunities.
“Working for PwC, it’s not something that as a high school student I would have thought I’d be doing, but I’m there, and it’s pretty cool to see how far I’ve come. I think I’m going to thrive in that environment and enjoy it.”
