David Tohi in Honiara, assisting Solomon Airlines with compliance and safety measures.
While many of us were googling ‘best hand sanitiser’ or ‘how to make sourdough’ during New Zealand’s lockdown in 2020, David (Tevita) Tohi was pressing his search engine into loftier service.
“I googled ‘best MBA courses in NZ’ and Otago came up. It had good reviews and international recognition, and it was an online course, so it was ideal.”
David wasn’t even supposed to be in New Zealand at the time – let alone enrolling for university courses. He’d been en route from Vanuatu to Tonga for work when our Prime Minister shut the border to thwart the spread of Covid-19.
With two kids at university in Christchurch, David made his way south to join their ‘bubble’. That’s when he signed himself up to the new educational universe of Zoom-powered learning.
He was in his late 50s at the time, and though a Master of Business Administration had always been on his wish list, he’d been too career-busy to squeeze it in. The Covid-19 pandemic provided him with just the life pause he needed to take it on.
This wasn’t the first time happenstance had a hand in David’s career. His early tertiary path was also hijacked by chance.
Tongan-born, David spent most of his childhood in Fiji before moving to Samoa with his family when he was 14. He completed his secondary schooling there before returning to Fiji to study Foundation Science at the University of the South Pacific.
He then won a scholarship from the Tongan government to attend Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology – and it was there that an admin muddle saw him enrolled in a degree he never intended to do.
“The government was offering new technical scholarships at that time – you could either be a pilot or an aircraft mechanic. When I found out you needed to be good at maths to be a pilot, I decided to be an aircraft mechanic instead.”
But fate had other ideas.
“The scholarships got mixed up and I ended up enrolled in Aerospace Engineering. In those classes it was like the top two per cent of students. I thought it seemed a little bit difficult, but I only found out after a year that they’d mixed the course up.”
His lecturers were a bit puzzled too.
“They were trying to establish how good my maths was. They asked, ‘Have you done differentiation and integration? What’s the derivative of x to the power of 2?’ I had absolutely no idea.
“They said, ‘Sorry, I think you better see the course coordinator. I don’t think you can do this course.' I wondered why they’d say that when I’d got a scholarship.
“But I stuck at it (with the assistance of private tutors) and finally got through the course. It was only when I got to know the other students that I realised that they weren’t kidding when they said they were the duxes from their high schools.”
Was he pleased, in hindsight, that he’d been clueless about the course mix-up?
“Yes and no – I wouldn’t do it again. I think ignorance was a good thing.”
Since then, David has clocked up 30 years of aviation experience in both the airline industry (around quality assurance and safety management systems) and the aviation regulatory field (in aviation regulatory compliance expertise). Which is to say, he basically keeps us safe in the air.
Last year he took up the position of Secretary General for the Association of South Pacific Airlines – a position that sees him assisting airlines in need. He thinks it’s pretty much his ideal job.
When David enrolled in the MBA in his late 50s, it was with the aim of giving back to the wider aviation industry in the Pacific region.
“Aviation is not a field that many Pacific Islanders have stuck it out in. The MBA gave me a wealth of knowledge and insight into different aspects of management and strategic thinking in a first world country that I wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to working around the Pacific.
“If we don’t put ourselves in these learning situations, we can be a bit isolated in terms of our understanding of bigger issues around the world.”
David completed his degree last year, in between work commitments, and is set to graduate on 17 August. Now aged 60, he’s eyeing up Otago’s Doctor of Business Administration programme. A sucker for punishment then?
“That’s what everyone is telling me. They say, ‘Why do you want to keep studying?’ But we have to keep on learning.”
– Kōrero by Claire Finlayson, Communications Adviser (Otago Business School)