Our CommUnity Team
Community Funds Limited Directors
John Parker – Chairman/CEO
During his long and varied career, John has both coached international athletes across several sports and has been an international professional athlete himself. His international sports consultancy can count several prominent sporting organisations, both national and international, among its clients. He has also worked in the sporting media, and has founded multiple sport and physical activity related educational organisations which offer everything from short community courses to tertiary degrees in sport and physical activity.
John has also overseen the funding and construction of large sporting facilities, has managed and led new sport and physical activity organisations, and helped to launch a chain of organisations promoting sporting participation in two countries. He has also developed computer programs to help make both sporting organisations and the corporate world more accountable.
John Wiltshire – Director
John is the senior equity partner at Beattie Rickman Legal in Hamilton where one of his specialties is Sports Law. In addition to acting as a lawyer for several international sports athletes and national sports organisations, John also lectures in Sports Law at the University of Waikato.
Johns sits on several boards and clubs including the Independent Schools Council of New Zealand and the Board of the Asia Pacific Academy of Business in Society. John has also captained two first class New Zealand cricket sides. John is the ‘legal brains’ behind CommUnity and will apply his wealth of knowledge to support CommUnity and all its components through his legal experience and wisdom.
Simon Wills – Director
Simon has been involved in the Telecommunications industry for the past 18 years, both in New Zealand and in the United Kingdom. During that time, he has both owned his own high profile Vodafone dealership and worked for Spark as a Senior Business Consultant. Having also been a merchant for over a decade, Simon understands the trials and tribulations of running a business, the costs associated with sponsorship and trying to track the returns (if any) from loyal customers.
Simon can empathise with merchants, the stress of running a business while trying to maintain a healthy relationship with customers and retaining loyal staff to keep the business profitable. CommUnity will benefit merchants in so many ways that he only wishes this program was around during his time as a merchant!
Since leaving the telco industry, he set up his own business designing customised smartphone apps, websites and shopping carts for businesses. This is how he came to meet the two Johns and got involved with the design, implementation and rollout of CommUnity over a 6 year period. Simon is really looking forward to building close working relationships with everyone in the CommUnity ecosystem to deliver real benefits to local communities and hardworking merchants both now and into the future through his Operations & Regional Manager roles within the CommUnity family.