Royce Elliott, a 1968 Harkness fellow, died 0n 19 September 2019.

Royce was a veterinary scientist who had a distinguished career in the Ministry of Agriculture.  He was a visionary leader who transformed the state veterinary service, modernised the regulation of dairy processing and integrated the Ministry’s food safety and agricultural biosecurity systems.

He held a series of senior management positions including eight years as Assistant Director-General of Agriculture.   In 1990, he was appointed Group Director, Policy and retired in 1993 as Deputy Director- General MAF.

Following retirement from the Ministry of Agriculture, Royce became Executive Director of the Institute of Public Administration NZ (IPANZ) for several years in the mid to late 1990s.

He is well known in the New Zealand Harkness family because he was the Harkness Fellowships representative of the Commonwealth Fund of New York for New Zealand from 1984 to 1992.  He chaired the selection panels for those years.

In 2015 , Royce published “The Glass Jar” about his childhood in an orphanage.  He was a devoted family man and a kind and generous manager with the highest ethical standards.

He was qualified as BVSc (Hons), MRCVS, DIP BACT (MANCH) and was awarded an OBE and the NZ 1990 Medal.  He was a Harkness Fellow from 1968-70 at the Trudeau Medical Research Institute in New York.