Sam Archer is a Sustainability Consultant and Mechanical Engineer with over 18 years experience in the Construction Industry. As Director Market Transformation at the New Zealand Green Building Council, he is responsible for running the sustainability and energy assessment tools - Green Star, Homestar and NABERSNZ.

He has a passion for sustainable housing having spent 6 years creating and managing the sustainability framework for a 3000 home development for the University of Cambridge. Sam also has extensive experience in sustainability and energy strategies, including carbon policy work for UK government, sustainable urban design and low energy and passive building design.

Justin Connolly is the Director of Deliberate, a consultancy specialising in the use of qualitative research and systems thinking to help understand complexity. His use of systems thinking draws on the field of system dynamics and participatory processes to build system insights.

Justin works across the linked subject areas of climate action and policy, natural resource management, urban development, wellbeing and sustainable development. Justin is one of the founders of the New Zealand hub of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. He is also passionate about helping people understand the size of, and how to navigate, the climate change crisis, and was New Zealand’s first accredited En-ROADS Climate Ambassador. 

Kent is Principal Consultant at Tāmaki Makaurua-based wellbeing and economics consultancy Habilis NZ Ltd. He and his team provide analysis and assistance to communities, iwi and NGOs across Aotearoa, focusing on social return on investment, wellbeing impact assessment and consensus decision making. Kent is Pākehā and Tangata Tiriti, is a vocal supporter of the LGBTQIA+ community and proudly neurodiverse.

Dr David Hall is Climate Policy Director at Toha, Adjunct Lecturer in Climate Action at AUT University, and Principal Investigator for AUT’s Living Laboratories Programme for research and education in nature-based solutions. He has a DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford and his previous roles include the Forestry Ministerial Advisory Group, Contributing Author to IPCC AR6 WG2, and Founding Director of the Climate Innovation Lab for climate finance. He has published widely on climate action, policy design, sustainable finance and just transitions. 

Gareth is the Country Lead for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Aotearoa, one of 15 national hubs for this global organisation focused on redesigning our economic systems so they deliver wellbeing for people and planet.

He is also the chairperson of SAFE, New Zealand’s largest animal advocacy organisation and a political commentator for RNZ and a columnist for Stuff.

Gareth served as a Green Member of Parliament for a decade where he chaired the Social Service and Community Select Committee was the Green Party’s whip and strategist. He retired in 2020 and moved to Quarantine Island, a conservation island in Otago where he lived with his family as the only residents. Here he wrote a biography of Jeanette Fitzsimons and led the engagement work of a new national food rescue alliance. Prior to entering Parliament he was a climate campaigner at Greenpeace. He lives in Wellington with two teenage children and he loves to sail his yacht Avanti.

Michelle is the Founder of Auckland Climate Festival, having successfully launched the first iteration in October 2021 during Covid, doubling the size of it in 2022 and continuing to lead and grow the initiative in 2023. Michelle is a visionary thinker and a calculated risk taker, passionate about collaboration and the generation of new and innovative ideas. She is passionate about using the Auckland Climate Festival platform to tell a hope-filled story and drive climate action and regeneration for Aotearoa. She draws on her expertise in strategic urban and transport planning, foresight and innovation and geography and environmental management into the curation of the festival.

Makerita was born in Leauva’a Samoa, and raised in Titahi Bay Porirua. For the last 16 years, Makerita has worked alongside the Porirua East community to develop up local solutions to local problems. Her focus is on growing leadership and capability in the community and privileging the local voice in the design and delivery of community innovations. Her work has a focus on dreaming up new responses to the broken economic system too many of us live in. She has lead the development of a range of community innovations including the Good Cents financial wellbeing project, the Ngahere Korowai project and the Wellington Regional Fruit and Veggie Cooperative.  She uses her expertise in client and community-led approaches to support others to develop their practice too.  

Jason Mika is Tūhoe, Ngāti Awa, Whakatōhea, Ngāti Kahungunu. Jason was born in Whakatāne and raised mainly in Rotorua. Jason is married with seven children. He is an associate professor at Te Raupapa Waikato Management School and Te Kotahi Research Institute, University of Waikato, in Hamilton, New Zealand. Jason’s research, teaching, writing, and practice centres on Indigenous business philosophy in multiple sites, sectors, and scales, including Indigenous trade, tourism, agribusiness, and the marine economy. In 2015, Jason completed a PhD in Māori entrepreneurship at Massey University. In 2019, Jason was a Fulbright-Ngā Pae o Te Māramatanga senior scholar at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment and the University of Arizona’s Native Nations Institute. Jason is a member of the Academy of Management, Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management, and Te Apārangi Royal Society of New Zealand. Prior to academia, Jason was a management consultant and government analyst specialising in Māori economic development. Jason’s research has been influential in several areas of public policy including international trade, environmental policy, business statistics, and tax administration.

Kelly Mitchell (Ngaati Maahanga) is an Assistant Lecturer at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington. Pursuing an LLM by thesis, she profiles Māori legal academics' research methods in a traditionally positivist discipline. She produced papers in her undergraduate degree covering Māori expertise, Tikanga Māori labour division, and tikanga-based exchanges in tax law. Kelly advances the discourse on indigenous legal perspectives, aligning traditional wisdom with contemporary legal scholarship.

Jennifer Nickel is a Hamilton constituency Councillor on Waikato Regional Council and leads their Climate Action Committee.  Prior, she worked in environmental management at Fonterra and cancer research at the Cancer Society Research Center.  Qualifications include a Master of Science (tech) in molecular biology from Waikato University and a Graduate Diploma in Sustainable Practice from Otago Polytechnic. She is keen to apply new wellbeing economy concepts in practice.

Ruth Nonu’s roots are from Siumu and Sale’imoa  Samoa raised on the North Shore of Auckland and now resides in Porirua.  Ruth is a past participant of the Good Cents financial wellbeing course.  From the courageous changes that she implemented as a direct result of the course, Good Cents invited her to be trained to facilitate, which she took on and is now leading the Local Economics work for Te Hiko, at Wesley Community Action, based in Cannons Creek Porirua.  This is a local grass roots  response to the broken economic system too many of us live in.  Ruth  is a Good Cents Facilitator, co-ordinates the Porirua Wealth Pool and Porirua Timebank.

Ruth is  a mother of four and a grandmother to four.

Juhi Shareef is co-founder at PROJECT:MOONSHOT, a non-profit aiming to accelerate the transition to a circular and regenerative economy. Innovations include te takarangi - the reimagining of the doughnut economic model into te reo with Dr. Teina Boasa-Dean, and most recently the Moonshot Map of circular and regenerative businesses across Aotearoa. Juhi is Chief Responsibility Officer at Tourism Holdings Ltd where she oversees risk and sustainability for the business globally.