In fact, the community is at the centre of Mr Nally's approach to his new job as the Fire Service's East Otago area commander.
"I love what the Fire Service does and represents to the community and I feel really passionate about building the community's sustainability and resilience.
"My role is to protect what the community values."
The 42-year-old has been the acting commander, which includes the position of Dunedin fire chief, since November, taking over the reigns from Dave Seque who retired after 38 years with the Fire Service.
Mr Nally was appointed permanently to the role in June, and is settling into life in Dunedin and his new job.
Although he has 20 years' firefighting under his belt, it was not something in his blood as none of his family were firefighters, he said.
"I was a Southland farm boy. It was 1992, I was 22, it was a recession, there was high unemployment. Basically, I saw an ad for a job and I got it. And I found my love."
Since joining, he has worked around the country, including several years in headquarters in Wellington, and most recently as the Fire Service's Southland area commander.
Part of the job's attraction was that the Fire Service was the agency that helped when people needed it, he said.
That was also the challenge for the future, as the type of help people needed from the Fire Service was changing. In some stations already more than half the work was medical callouts, weather-related incidents, special services and crashes.
Couple that with the time, regulatory, planning and training pressures on volunteers and the way the Fire Service operated and was structured and funded (it is largely funded from fire insurance levies), it was going to have to change, he said.
In fact it was "inevitable" the whole emergency service sector would have to change and that would include various organisations working much more closely together.
Mr Nally said he was looking forward to the challenges.
He has a particular interest in emergency management and while working for the Fire Service had gained a master's in emergency management, a graduate diploma in emergency management, a graduate certificate in applied management and is working on a graduate diploma in applied management.
But even though he had the full range of business skills he needed to manage the service, the community remained at the core of what he did.
He was "very" conscious of the fact the money to run services largely came from taxpayers' pockets, so his focus was on making sure not a cent of that money was wasted, he said.