A gay men's chorister, former HIV counsellor and prevention campaigns volunteer is the new Regional Coordinator for the New Zealand AIDS Foundation's Awhina Centre. Appointee Daniel Eakins from Minneapolis, USA, has a Masters in Counselling Psychology and was Assistant Director of Careers Services at a university before coming to New Zealand with his partner Frank. Eakins says neither he nor his partner were comfortable with the increasingly anti-gay climate in America and decided to look for a country which they saw as more liberal and socially inclusive. Eakins says working for the New Zealand AIDS Foundation is a logical extension of his volunteer work and realises an ambition to take this interest from a volunteer to a professional level.