Todd McClay is the Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Forestry, Minister for Hunting and Fishing, Minister for Trade, and Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs. He has been the MP for Rotorua since 2008.

Todd held several Ministerial roles in the Fifth National Government with portfolios including Trade, State-Owned Enterprises and Revenue.

Todd has previously been a diplomat and was the Cook Islands and Nuie Ambassador to the European Union. He has worked in business in Europe as well as government and public relations internationally.

Ben Burrowes is the Education Counsellor and Acting General Manger (International) of Education New Zealand (ENZ) Manapou ki te Ao.
In his Counsellor role, Ben leads bilateral education relationships across the region which underpin New Zealand's economic and diplomatic interests.
Ben is also responsible for leading ENZ’s team based in the region which is focused on profiling New Zealand as an education partner and ensuring international education contributes to New Zealand’s international relations goals.
Prior to joining ENZ in 2017, Ben worked in the public relations sector, supporting a range of New Zealand brands and Government agencies with their strategic communications and business development programmes across Asia. He has been based in Singapore since 2008.

Bicky Nguyen is the Cofounder & Business Development Director at CricketOne, the leading global supplier in cricket ingredients for the food and beverage industry. Their products are sold in 27 different countries across 4 continents, with recent expansion into retail business launching "Rec Rec" - a cricket tapioca cracker that has sold quickly almost 50k units across different countries. Her passion is to turn cricket based product into daily diet to tackle climate change and promote a sustainable way of living. Before the journey with CricketOne, she also founded another tech startup that implemented IoTs in agriculture to make it more predictable, increasing yield while optimizing the use the natural resources like soil and water. Bicky recently won the "“Liveability Challenge” funded by Temasek Foundation, classified as the largest sustainable and innovative award in Asia. She competed among 1000 other applications from over 100 countries, walking away with $1million demonstrating elements of world-leading sustainability, practicality, scalability, and impact-driven solutions.

Mike has been involved in the renewable / clean energy industry for more than 40 years with extensive international experience, particularly in the geothermal industry. He has been an independent consultant since 2002.
He spent over 25 years with GENZL involved in the geothermal industry, undertaking project developments in Indonesia, Japan, Africa, Latin America and the Mediterranean. He lived in Indonesia and Kenya during the early stages of their geothermal developments and, from 1995 to 2001, was based in the USA running a Rockefeller Foundation supported facility focused on early-stage finance and business development support for clean energy projects in emerging economies.
From 2009 to late 2016, Mike was a non-executive member of the board of Mercury NZ Ltd in New Zealand, a power utility with significant hydro and geothermal generation.

Stephanie is a trade policy consultant with expertise in digital, services and agriculture trade, regional economic integration in the Asia-Pacific, the WTO, and inclusion in trade for women and small businesses. Formerly a New Zealand trade negotiator, including serving as chief agriculture negotiator during the intensive phase of the WTO Doha Round negotiations, Stephanie provides consulting services to a broad range of clients from the public and private sectors including international institutions such as the OECD and Asian Development Bank, and is a sought-after commentator on trade policy. She is the policy advisor to the New Zealand members of the APEC Business Advisory Council, and is co-founder of Global Trade Insights, a business offering executive education in trade policy around the world. Stephanie sits on the Board of the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority and the Advisory Board of the Centres for Asia-Pacific Excellence.

Toeolesulusulu Professor Damon Salesa is the Vice-Chancellor of Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makaurau – Auckland University of Technology (AUT). He leads a university of over 28,000 students and 4,000 staff – one of the largest universities in New Zealand.

Damon is a prize-winning scholar, specialising in history, society, and politics in New Zealand and the other Pacific Islands. After obtaining his MA with First Class Honours at the University of Auckland, he completed his doctoral studies at University of Oxford, UK. He is the author and editor of many books and academic articles including Island Time: New Zealand’s Pacific Futures and Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage and the Victorian British Empire, which won the international Ernest Scot Prize in 2012 and recently published a book titled An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and currently serves on their council.

Previously, he has been Pro Vice-Chancellor Pacific at the University of Auckland, where he was also Co-Head of Te Wānanga o Waipapa (School of Māori Studies and Pacific Studies). He worked at the University of Michigan for 10 years, including in roles as Director of the Asian Pacific Islander American Studies Program and as an Associate Professor in the History Department and Program in American Culture.

Damon retains strong connections to many of Auckland’s communities, especially in South Auckland. A passionate teacher and educator, he has been an innovator at the interface between schools and universities and has been an important leader and supporter of the work of schools, in pedagogy, curriculum and governance leadership roles in education, research, and community.