Bev Adlam

Tu Tangata, Issue 31, 1 August 1986, Page 54

Bev Adlam

BEV ADLAM, winner of this year’s Businesswoman Award, has done what even Ron Trotter thought would be difficult. In one year she’s changed the face of the Kawerau business environment.

.Adlam, 39. heads the Kawerau Enterprise Agency which she set up in 1985 with the help of the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company, to stimulate and promote new business development in the mill town. KEA’s mission was to widen the town’s economic base, lessen its dependence on one industry and provide employment choices for its residents, particularly women and young people. Against sometimes negative expectations, Bev Adlam and KEA have done just that. Already 44 new businesses have been set up in Kawerau in the last year, with 14 more on the fast track. More than 120 full-time jobs have been created, and 25-30 job share or casual jobs.

As well, the first stage of the million dollar KEA Industrial Park is now set to open, with nine businesses already signed up as tenants. The finance for that was raised from public investment through the innovative and extremely successful Kawerau Community Bond - fully subscribed to its $400,000 limit six weeks before closing date.

Sir Ron Trotter, chairman of Fletcher Challenge, which has been closely associated with KEA through its Tasman subsidiary, wrote in support of Adlam’s nomination that he believed the concept of an enterprise agency would be a difficult one to establish.

Bev Adlam was born in Kawerau some years before Tasman built the mill which has come to dominate the town. She’s lived there most of her life and doesn’t find it difficult to enthuse about the assets of her hometown.

Says Gill Ellis, one of the judges for the award, “She has a passionate vision of her role in creating a future for her town, changing the dependency of its citizens on one major employer and providing people with choices in their lives.” Though Adlam says that directing KEA is her first full-time job, there is no doubt that the breadth of her experience

in education, radio broadcasting, community work, youth unemployment and Maori affairs made her ideal for the position.

Bev Adlam had produced, compiled and presented one of the first Maori programmes on private radio for IXX in Whakatane since 1970, picking up Mobil Radio Awards in 1983 and 1984. She was a finalist in the Pater Award for Australian broadcasters in 1983.

Bilingual and bicultural, she’s taught Maori language at the local college and intermediate, counselled students, and is on the Kawerau College board of governors.

She has devoted much of her time to Maori affairs and been involved with Maori land issues. She’s a past president of the local branch of Maori Women’s Welfare League, and was named the Young Maori Woman of the Year in 19 74.

She’s also been involved in youth issues. She has been on the Kawerau Children's Board which looked into the backgrounds of child offenders. And before setting up KEA she organised and supervised job skills programmes for Kawerau’s jobless youth.

A wife and mother of five (her oldest is 21 and her youngest seven), Adlam counts her first real career as being a young mum. That, she says, is where she gets most of her management ideas and skill from.

“Probably the skills that I’ve learnt as a mother have helped me in my present job more than anything else.’’