Keynote speakers 

Ian Taylor

One of New Zealand's most renowned innovators who has built his business on his complete faith and trust in his team and their vision.

Ian holds an LLB from the University of Otago, and was inducted into the New Zealand Hi-Tech Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2010 he was named North & South magazine's New Zealander of the Year. In the same year he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the New Zealand Computer Society, the top honour of the ICT sector in New Zealand.

He was named a Companion of the NZ Order of Merit in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to television and business and won the Creative sector of the World Class New Zealander Awards in the same year.

In 2013 Ian was also named Outstanding Maori Business Leader of the Year.

It may come as a surprise then that Ian claims to have no skills whatsoever – is at a loss to understand why anyone would want to hear his story and believes that the reason he has received the accolades he has is because he lives at the bottom of the world where no one has been able to check him out.

That --- and the fact that he has had the amazing good fortune to have worked alongside some of the cleverest people in the world.

Session kindly sponsored by

Peter Withey

Peter Withey is currently President of the Actuarial Society of South Africa and represents ASSA on a number of International Actuarial Association Committees, including Council, Professionalism and Scientific Committees and is also a member of the IAA Nominations Committee. Peter qualified as an FIA and FASSA in 1989 and has experience in a wide variety of actuarial and non-actuarial roles in his career. He is currently employed by KPMG in South Africa where he provides both consulting actuarial services and technical actuarial support to KPMG audits. Peter works primarily in the Life Insurance field but has exposure in non-life insurance, pensions and health actuarial matters as well. Peter is keen to see the profession develop beyond the traditional fields of Insurance and Pensions and expand the reach of the profession into areas where the skill set of long term and systemic thinking can play a role.

Scott Pickering

Chief Executive, Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) 

Scott was previously regional CEO at one of the world's largest insurance brokers, Willis (Towers Watson), for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Prior to Willis, Scott worked for Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance (RSA) as Regional CEO for Asia and the Middle East. He has also held senior regional leadership and Chief Executive roles at ACE Insurance and CIGNA in the Asia-Pacific region.

All Scott's leadership roles have been defined by his desire to ensure the delivery of quality customer service. He was delighted to return from overseas and work for New Zealanders, and is particularly enthused by the role ACC has to play in working with businesses and communities to prevent injuries and make New Zealand a safer place.

Jarrod Kerr

Kiwibank Chief Economist

Jarrod Kerr is Kiwibank's newly appointed Chief Economist. Jarrod has a passion for the environment, financial literacy, and everything economics. Although born and schooled in New Zealand, he cut his teeth in US, Swiss, and Australian banks, and has spent his entire career overseas. Jarrod started off as an economist at JP Morgan in Sydney. He then moved into financial markets as an interest rate strategist for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, before moving to Credit Suisse in Singapore as Head of Australian and New Zealand fixed income and economic research. After 16 years abroad, Jarrod has returned home to the mighty Kiwibank.

Lance Burdett

Heavily involved as a crisis negotiator for over 13 years, Lance Burdett became the National Advisor for all NZ Police Negotiation Teams. He completed the NZ Police Negotiation course (and remains an instructor), the FBI Negotiators Course, and the Counter Terrorist Negotiators Course held in Australia.

He ran numerous high-risk negotiations including the Napier Siege and the highly-publicised Paremoremo prison hostage situation. Lance specialised in suicide intervention. Following a stint as the Commander of the Police Emergency call centre where he further honed his communication skills, Lance developed and delivered coaching sessions on managing difficult people and on reducing personal stress to varied audiences.

His communications and resilience programme was nationally accepted by NZ Police and now forms part of their mandatory training for all emergency call centre staff.

In 1999, Lance became unwell and was diagnosed with accumulated stress disorder, burnout. He began researching how and why stress impacts on us to identify prevention strategies. Reading self-help books soon led to university studies and ended with the completion of a Master of Arts Degree, majoring in Terrorism Safety and Security.

Along the way, Lance received a Graduate Diploma in Business Studies, a Diploma in Policing (NZ) and a Graduate Certificate in Applied Management. All topics studied were based around the understanding of human dynamics and included psychology, radicalisation & de-radicalisation, organisational behaviour and adult learning.

Lance has been consulting and coaching on enhanced communications and personal resilience since 2007. He recently published a bestselling book 'Behind The Tape – Life on the Police Frontline' and was featured on the TVNZ Sunday programme. Lance regularly appears in the media commenting on police issues. 

Prof James Renwick

James has nearly four decades' experience in weather and climate research. His main field is large-scale climate variability and climate change, including such things as El Niño and the impacts of climate variability and change on New Zealand and the Antarctic. James was a lead author for the last two Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is a Convening Lead Author for the new 6th IPCC Assessment. He is a member of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Joint Scientific Committee, is co-chair of the WCRP CliC (Climate and Cryosphere) project, and was until recently the chair of the Royal Society of New Zealand Climate Expert Panel.

Malcolm Law

Malcolm Law is a great down-to-earth Kiwi adventurer, fundraiser and storyteller.

In 2008 he took time out from a successful career in market research to pursue a hugely ambitious personal goal. A year later, he had become the first (and still only) person to run New Zealand's 7 mainland Great Walks in just 7 days. He raised $85,000 for charity.

Soon after completing his first '7in7 Challenge' Malcolm realised that he had inspiring stories to tell and a knack for telling them. He started answering requests to tell his story and the requests have not stopped. He decided not to go back to the safe comfort zone of what he knew best. Instead, he made the decision to throw caution to the wind and pursue his more selfless and rewarding career as an adventurer, fundraiser and storyteller. He has gone on to complete numerous superhuman running firsts - including running 50 marathons over 50 mountains in 50 days - and has raised almost $800,000 for the Leukaemia & Blood Foundation and the Mental Health Foundation NZ.

In 2012 Malcolm was awarded a New Zealander of the Year 'Local Hero' medal. In 2015 he won Wilderness Magazine's 'Outdoor Hero of the Year' award. This year he has also been nominated for 'New Zealander of the Year' for a third time.

Dream Big. Live Big. Do Good. Inspire People.

These are the beliefs that drive Malcolm's passion for 'adventures with a cause'.

Session kindly sponsored by