Summit Program
The Emerging Leaders Summit is New Zealand’s key event for the next generation of managers, directors and leaders. The program brings together inspirational speakers, the latest industry trends and insights, and hundreds of ambitious, determined professionals looking to get an edge in their career.
You’ll hear from the best in the business on how they achieved their dream roles and all of the lessons they learned along the way. You’ll walk away feeling inspired and reinvigorated, with new contacts and a game plan towards being a leader others aspire to become.

8.30 – REGISTRATION AND WELCOME COFFEE
9.00 – OPENING REMARKS FROM THE CHAIR, JOE DAVIS
Look at any successful business model and you will notice that they all have one thing in common: innovation. They have all identified a critical need among their customers and invented a unique solution to meet this need.
So, how can you tap into this innovative mindset to spark your potential and success at work?
Sharndré Kushor is a young entrepreneur who, in her own words, co-founded a “unicorn” in her first year of university. The company, Crimson Education, addressed the need to level the playing field for students applying to universities through providing academic support and consulting. After successfully growing the company worldwide with a current valuation of $400m, you could say that it is a success story.
Sharndré has since moved on from her COO role at Crimson, focusing her energies on philanthropic endeavours including The One Billion. Her ongoing achievements are a testament to her creativity, tenacity, and business acumen – and at the age of 28, she’s just getting started.
In this inspirational presentation, you will be inspired to:
- Leverage your ideas and skills for maximum impact
- Harness your inner entrepreneur and identify opportunities for success
- Back yourself when met with challenges and setbacks
- Invest your time and energy into the things that truly matter to you
- Create opportunities for others to realise their own potential
We spend all day everyday communicating. But there are some situations that really stump us:
- How to influence or change minds
- How to give (and receive) feedback
- How to “get shit done” quickly without offending
- How to have HARD conversations. About literally anything uncomfortable
In typical badass style, Shelly will guide us through how to be more outcomes focused when we communicate. When we understand exactly what we want to achieve, we can decide on the most successful approaches. It’s never going to be failproof, because #humans. But understanding that is part of the solution!
10:45 – MORNING COFFEE
11:15
ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE: IT STARTS WITH YOU
TRACY STREET, Chief Executive Officer at Centre for Vision and Leadership
The current pace of change in business has never been matched. So, as a leader, how do you manage this onslaught of change and bring your team with you on the journey?
Organisational change management is an indispensable skill for today’s managers and leaders, and it so it is important that you feel comfortable enacting change, as well as navigating it.
Tracy will be sharing her experiences as a leader and offering guidance on how you can inspire others towards a shared vision, undertake complex problem solving and connect on a personal level with your team.
This session will give you the confidence to effectively lead your organisation through change. You will learn how to:
- Demonstrate the change you want to see in your people
- Foster a culture of trust and open communication
- Approach organisational change proactively
- Create a strategic vision that your team can get on board with
12:00
INTEGRATING DIVERSITY & INCLUSION INTO YOUR LEADERSHIP DNA
HAYLEE PUTARANUI, Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Fonterra
There is a growing consensus that championing diversity and inclusion in the workplace has a direct impact to the business bottom line. Simply put, D&I is great for business.
However, it is not enough to have good intentions when it comes to supporting your team – you need to be actively working towards creating a sense of belonging at every opportunity. For an emerging leader, this means you have an immense responsibility to contribute to a culture of D&I, which benefits all team members.
Haylee Putaranui, Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Fonterra, will be taking to the stage to share her experience and insights so that you can confidently navigate this space and create an environment where your team members can thrive.
This session will cover:
- Practical steps to encourage and support your people
- How you can affect change in your organisation to embrace D&I and become more socially responsible
- How you can engage with and learn from Māori in your workplace and embed Te Ao Māori into your processes and procedures
- The challenges ahead in 2023 for D&I
12:45 – LUNCH BREAK
Have you experienced burnout? Are you able to spot burnout in your team members? For many people, burnout is their daily reality – a state of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion that can be really challenging to bounce back from.
Our ‘always on’ culture has a lot to answer for. The increasingly blurred lines between work and home life, combined with a lack of support systems and time for self-care, presents the perfect storm for our health. So how can we prevent burnout in our teams and in ourselves, so we can bring our best selves to work and lead flourishing lives?
Clinical Psychologist Jacqui Maguire has a fantastic way of breaking down scientific evidence to provide practical strategies to optimise your wellbeing. In this session, Jacqui will share the science behind the causes and counters of burnout, so you can help your team go from unrefreshed and uninspired to energised and motivated!
You will gain the knowledge and tools you need to:
- Foster a healthier and more sustainable work/life balance in your workplace
- Manage stress levels for your team and yourself
- Navigate conversations regarding mental health
- Integrate wellbeing practices into your leadership approach
- Use psychology to boost productivity, creativity, and morale in your team
Team building is not just about creating camaraderie and building togetherness, although they’re definite perks of the process. Creating a high-performing team well is critical to truly accelerating individual and collective effectiveness and success. The challenge is knowing how to get to the heart of what your team is, should and could be, and using the art and science of human performance and motivation to get there.
Angus starts by challenging that if teamwork is such an important thing, it makes sense we ought to be very familiar about how to create strong teams, maintain them and be a great team member of a team that has been built correctly in the first place. He believes you do that through the fundamentals of elite teams. That starts with a simple check in, including does your team work to a shared purpose? Has it got measures to track ongoing team effectiveness? Is there role clarity for everyone on the team?
Over his presentation, Angus will share his expertise, experiences and exploration through the ongoing team effectiveness. Evocatively, he will challenge us to see “team building” through the day job and doing the work, having constructed the team properly in the first place, as proper team development and seldom those expensive jollies and cliched exercises.
You’ll learn how you can:
- Create structure that creates unity and a shared mental model
- Make wellbeing a key measure of your team effectiveness
- Spark creativity and fuel motivation in your team
- Be of service to your team and leave a lasting, positive legacy
15:15 – AFTERNOON TEA
15:45 – SPONSOR PRIZE DRAWS
In this final session of the day, you will hear from James Laughlin, a high-performance leadership strategist, who will share his journey to becoming a successful and respected mentor, mental skills coach and podcast host. James has worked with hundreds of high performers across Australia and New Zealand to help them achieve transformational results in their personal and professional lives.
James will be providing practical leadership lessons, while offering ideas and wisdom to help you become a leader others aspire towards. He will share heartfelt stories that will help you heighten your awareness, inspire you to take action and lead with monomaniacal vision.
In addition to receiving a High Performance Vision Model™ that you will be able to implement into your own organisation, you will learn:
- The foundations of great leadership and how to develop your leadership style
- The key ingredient that great leaders embrace to guide themselves and their teams through turbulent times
- The elements underpinning all successful mentor-mentee relationships
- How to become more self-aware and develop your EQ