Early Life and Career in New Zealand
Born on 2 January 1952 in Napier, New Zealand, he attended Westlake Boys High School in Auckland, where a house has been named after him (Hood House). He studied engineering at the University of Auckland, where he earned a PhD in Civil Engineering. He then won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford (Worcester College), where he studied for an MPhil in management. He won a Blue playing squash for Oxford University and also played first-class cricket for Oxford University in 1977.
He has held a number of directorships in prominent New Zealand companies and bodies, including Fonterra, Fletcher Challenge and the New Zealand Cricket review of 1995. His career at Fletcher Challenge is described in the book Battle of the Titans by Bruce Wallace. From 1998-2004 he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Auckland.
He has two daughters (Anna and Nina Hood) and son (Thomas Hood).
Read more about this topic: John Hood
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, career and/or zealand:
“O troubled forms, O early love unfortunate and hard,
Time has estranged you into a jewel cold and pure;”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (18921950)
“Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own.”
—W.E. (William Ewart)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a mans career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Teasing is universal. Anthropologists have found the same fundamental patterns of teasing among New Zealand aborigine children and inner-city kids on the playgrounds of Philadelphia.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)