How to cluster together variables in an IF statement

Right now I have:

IF x = n1 or x = n2 or x = n3 or x = n4 or x = n5 or x = n6 or x = n7 or x = n8 or x = n9 or x = n10 and x <> "" then

On a userform, there are a bunch of text boxes where you can enter in as many names as you want to search against X.

For example, you could fill in the first three of the text boxes with "Jim" "John" and "Larry" and n1 would = Jim, n2 = John and n3 = Larry. So basically the formula is checking

if X = "Jim" OR X = John OR x = Larry.

What I would ALSO like to do, is have the ability for someone to enter in "James" in one of the text boxes.

James is the supervisor of Jim, John, and Larry. So I want it to where if you only fill in one text box with the value of "James", the script would automatically have the formula checking to see if X = (Jim, John, or Larry).

I get that I could just say

If Textbox1.value = "James" then 
n1 = "Jim"
n2 = "John"
n3 = "Larry"

but I didn't know if there was an easier way to do this.

I would like to cluster it even further, to where let's say I have "Alex", who is the boss of James, as well as "Frank".

I would like entering "Alex" in one of the textboxes to automatically check the names of all subordinates under Frank and James against X. There may be continuing levels to this chain.

I also would like to group it by department, such as "Finance" would check all the names in the Finance list against X.

What is the easiest way to accomplish this?