Anna Allison (BA, Grad Dip Tchg) has a background in farming and education and has been involved with Smart Waikato since its inception. Anna is the Project Manager for Career Hauora and SSEP in the Waikato and across New Zealand under the Smart NZ brand. Passionate about fostering meaningful career pathways, she works closely with schools, businesses, and communities to create impactful opportunities that connect education with industry. Anna is currently studying the Graduate Certificate in Career Development at NMIT.

Yuzuka Ashizawa is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Human Sciences at Tokiwa University, Japan. Her research primary focuses on the transition from school to work in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the state of Ohio as her primary research field. Her academic inquiries explore the intricate relationship between vocational education at the school level and long-term career development. Through her fieldwork, she examines how educational frameworks and community-based support systems facilitate successful school-to-work transitions for students. Her ongoing work aims to provide comparative insights that contribute to both Japanese and international discourses on career education and workforce development.

Touseef Fatima is a PhD researcher at the Higher Education Development Centre, University of Otago, New Zealand. Her research explores the career transitions of PhD graduates from Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) into non-academic pathways, with a focus on employability, transferable skills, and professional identity development. Using a narrative inquiry approach, she develops career narratives to understand how doctoral graduates navigate complex career trajectories beyond academia. Her work aims to inform policy, enhance doctoral training, and support more inclusive and sustainable career outcomes. With over a decade of teaching experience since 2008, Touseef has worked across diverse educational contexts, including teacher education and engineering programmes. She has taught English pedagogy, communication, and technical writing, bringing an interdisciplinary perspective to her teaching and research. Her experience has strengthened her interest in curriculum development, graduate employability, and the evolving role of higher education in preparing students for dynamic and uncertain career landscapes. Touseef holds an MS in Educational Leadership and Management, an M.Ed in Educational Administration and Supervision, and a Master’s degree in English Literature and Linguistics. She has published research in reputable journals using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. In addition to her research, she has contributed to academic development through facilitating tutor and demonstrator training workshops. She is committed to advancing research-informed practices in higher education and supporting doctoral graduates in navigating meaningful and diverse career pathways.

Annie Gourde has been a career counselor since 2006 and is a member of the Ordre des conseillers et conseillères d’orientation du Québec. She has worked in private practice, primarily with the goal of helping people facing career challenges, regardless of their experience, educational background, or the specific challenges they encounter. Whether for career reorientation, career coaching, returning to school, or support following burnout. As a career counselor specializing in organizational issues, she focuses on potential assessments, whether for recruitment or professional development. A member of the Board of Directors of the Ordre des conseillers et conseillères d’orientation du Québec from 2016 to 2025, she is now involved with the Disciplinary Committee. She also served for eight years as president of the Board of Directors of the Salon Carrière Formation de Québec. Since the fall of 2015, Ms. Gourde has been a lecturer at Laval University in the bachelor’s and master’s programs in career counseling, contributing to the training of future career counselors. She also provides professional supervision and conducts training sessions to help career counselors develop their skills in tele-counseling, record-keeping, and artificial intelligence. Since 2021, she has been a doctoral student in guidance counseling. She participated in a research project on interventions for refugees with limited schooling, which led to the creation of a guide for professionals. She also contributed to the development of the Digital Companion in IMT, a tool designed to facilitate research into academic and career information. Her doctoral research focuses on analyzing the evolution of technologies in the career counseling profession in Quebec.

I am a PhD scholar of Lincoln University College, Malaysia. At present I work as a senior assistant registrar attached to the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. In addition, I hold a BSc (Mathematics) and MBA from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. I was awarded the Young Research Scholar Award for the research paper presented at the 15th International Conference on Teaching, Education and Learning ICTEL), 14-15 June 2017, Singapore.

Melanie Hochmuth is a research associate and doctoral researcher at the Chair of Business Education at the University of Bamberg, Germany. Her academic profile is shaped by a strong interest in educational transitions, vocational learning processes, and the conditions that support successful educational pathways. In her research, she focuses particularly on school-to-work transitions, career decision-making, training quality and satisfaction, dropout prevention in vocational education, and discrimination and inequality in educational trajectories. As part of her doctoral research, Melanie Hochmuth examines how young people navigate the transition from school into vocational education and training within the German dual system. Her PhD project explores the role of work values, career aspirations, and workplace experiences in young people’s decision-making processes. By taking a process-oriented perspective, her research seeks to better understand how adolescents evaluate vocational pathways, negotiate expectations, and make sense of organisational environments during times of uncertainty and change. Her work contributes to current international debates on school-to-work transitions, vocational identity development, and person–environment fit in vocational contexts. At the University of Bamberg, she teaches courses in research methods in vocational education and training as well as professional action in educational contexts. Her teaching emphasises critical reflection, evidence-based practice, and the development of analytical skills that enable students to engage with current challenges in vocational education.

Takedai Ikeda is an Assistant Professor at Rikkyo University. He holds a PhD in Education from the University of Tokyo. His research focuses on gender segregation in fields of study and occupations. Yurino Yamaguchi is a PhD student at the Graduate School of Education, the University of Tokyo. Her research specializes in the sociology of education, with a particular focus on university students’ job search activities.

Karube Yuki is a researcher and educator specializing in clinical and educational psychology. Currently serving as a Lecturer at Teikyo Heisei University in Japan, their work integrates psychological theory with real-world practice in both academic and clinical contexts. Yuki's primary research interest centers on the career development of young adults, with a particular focus on the psychological mechanisms underlying university students' job-hunting activities. In this highly competitive process, rejection is inevitable for Japanese students, yet little is understood about how they sustain their search and integrate their emerging professional identities. To address this gap, Yuki has developed a theoretical model of this process and conducts quantitative research to identify key psychological variables that can improve career outcomes and inform counseling interventions. In addition to their research endeavors, Yuki contributes to training the next generation of clinical psychology professionals. They instruct courses ranging from foundational clinical psychology to skills-based and experiential seminars, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Clinical Interview Practicum. Central to their teaching philosophy is the belief that lasting learning emerges through experience: Yuki intentionally designs courses that encourage students to move fluidly between theory and practice, deepening their understanding through reflection on lived, in-class experiences. Yuki's future agenda centers on expanding research on career-related psychological distress and resilience. By continuing to conduct rigorous empirical research, they strive to generate evidence-based insights that can inform educational policies and university support systems. Ultimately, Yuki's aim is to foster a healthier, more supportive environment for young adults, enabling them to transition into society with confidence and sustain their career development thereafter.

Dr. Jaana Kettunen is a Professor of Guidance and Vice-director at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research (FIER), at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland and a Research Associate at Florida State University's Center for Career Research. She currently serves as President of the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance (IAEVG). Dr. Kettunen´s research has a strong international orientation and revolves around career guidance practices, practitioner training, quality, strategic leadership and public policy development, with a special interest in the design and use of information and communication technology including AI in career guidance. Her work bridges research and practical application, and she has published in leading journals in the field. Widely recognized for her expertise, she has delivered invited lectures and keynotes across Europe, North America, Asia, and Oceania, and has collaborated with UNESCO, OECD, ILO, and the European Commission. Dr. Kettunen’s influence extends well beyond academia, as she collaborates with international organizations, including the European Commission, OECD, ILO, and UNESCO. Her contributions have been recognized with international honours, including the NCDA International Practitioner of the Year Award and the IAEVG–APCDA Academic Excellence Award.

Dr Sujin Kim is a Lecturer in Career Development at James Cook University (Australia), where she teaches postgraduate subjects for emerging career development practitioners and contributes to curriculum design and professional practice learning. Her research sits at the intersection of career development, migration, and labour market participation, with a particular focus on how individuals accumulate, mobilise, and experience constraints in work-based resources across changing contexts. She is especially interested in the career development of migrants and mobile populations, including the ways that gendered labour markets and institutional conditions influence opportunity structures, agency, and decent work outcomes. Methodologically, she uses mixed-methods designs that integrate survey research and qualitative interviewing, drawing on contemporary vocational theories and social-contextual perspectives to generate evidence that is relevant for both scholarship and practice. Sujin contributes to Australia–Korea collaborative initiatives that support cross-border knowledge exchange and community engagement, and she works closely with interdisciplinary partners to translate research into practical insights for career services, education providers, and policy audiences. Her conference presentations and applied outputs focus on strengthening career development supports in migration contexts, improving understanding of barriers and enabling conditions in labour market transitions, and advancing measurement-informed approaches to career research.

I am currently responsible for managing an internship program at a university. Utilizing my national certification as a career consultant, my main duties include supporting students in finding internship opportunities and assisting instructors during classes. As I will have the opportunity to serve as an instructor myself in the future, I believe it is important to further develop my professional knowledge. My experience working in a private company after graduating from university has been a valuable asset when discussing careers with students. In addition, I worked at a travel agency, where I had many opportunities to travel abroad for work, and I hope to share these experiences with students as well. Since I am in charge of both domestic and international internships, I feel that my past experiences are highly useful in my current role. I am enrolled in a doctoral program at a graduate school, where I am conducting research in mind–body health science.

Lely-Rose Laurin is a Ph.D. student in career development at Université Laval, Québec, Canada. Her research focuses on workplace psychological harassment and its impact on the career trajectories of LGBTQ+ individuals. She is particularly interested in issues of social justice, inclusion, and professional reintegration.

Sonia Tiatia Sonia Tiatia is a passionate advocate for youth, community and industry connection, and the founder of DINE Academy. With a career grounded in hospitality and events, Sonia has built a reputation for bringing people together and creating opportunities that have lasting impact. Her work is driven by a deep belief that young people thrive when they are given real responsibility, trusted to contribute, and supported to step into environments that challenge and grow them. Sonia is known for her ability to connect across sectors, working closely with employers, educators and communities to create opportunities that feel relevant, practical and achievable for young people. Alongside her leadership of DINE Academy, Sonia has contributed extensively to the wider hospitality and training sector. She has served as a Schools Advisor for the Hospitality ITO, supported industry training initiatives, and been involved in judging across the sector. She is also a proud member of the Pacific community, bringing strong cultural values of service, connection and collective success into her work. Her contributions have been widely recognised, including receiving the Kiwibank Local Hero Award and the Pasifika Community Minded Business of the Year Award in 2018, and being appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in 2020 for her services to hospitality and youth. Sonia remains focused on creating pathways that are not only accessible, but empowering, ensuring young people are supported to realise their potential and contribute meaningfully to their communities.

Kotaro Morimoto, PhD, is a Professor in the Faculty of Cultural Studies at Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan. He received his PhD in Psychology from Kansai University and previously served as an Associate Professor at Fukui Prefectural University. With a professional background spanning higher education administration and career education, he brings an interdisciplinary perspective to research and practice in career guidance and career development. His research focuses on psychological processes in career development, including irrational career beliefs, career consciousness, local orientation and mobility intentions among university students, and evidence-based interventions informed by cognitive-behavioral and REBT-related perspectives. He has published peer-reviewed studies and authored books on career beliefs and career development, and he contributes to the field through academic peer review and professional service in relevant scholarly associations. His current projects investigate the psychological correlates of regional mobility patterns and the design of educational programs that enhance adaptive career exploration under uncertainty. Through international dissemination, he aims to bridge scientific evidence and professional practice in career guidance.

Ko Hikurangi te maunga Ko Waiapu te awa Ko Horouta te waka Ko Ngāti Porou te iwi I work at the intersection of entrepreneurship, education, and youth development here in Aotearoa New Zealand. I’m currently the Head of the Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) and Co-Chief Executive, where I get to work alongside thousands of young people each year as they explore ideas, build capability, and step into real-world opportunities. I didn’t set out to become an educator - in many ways, it found me - and I wouldn’t consider myself a formal educator in the traditional sense. My formal background includes an MBA from the University of Waikato and qualifications in adult education, which is where my journey began. But over time, I’ve found that working with young people is where I feel most at home. There’s something powerful about being around minds that are open, not yet shaped by what they’ve been told they can or can’t do. I don’t see myself as someone who has all the answers. My role is more about creating environments where opportunity can occur - spaces where young people can recognise that they can create their own pathways, their own futures - mana motuhake. Alongside YES, I’ve been part of initiatives such as Kōkiri, one of Aotearoa’s first Māori business accelerators, its evolution Tupu, and Young Navigators. My work is grounded in kaupapa Māori, shaped by my Māori, Polynesian, and European heritage, and informed by what I continue to learn from the young people I work with every day.

Hirokazu Nakashima is an education researcher in Japan whose work advances the theoretical and practical development of career guidance, inclusive education, and the sociology of education. His research focuses on how education systems can be redesigned to support equitable school-to-work transitions and lifelong career development for diverse learners. A central contribution of Nakashima’s work is the concept of “bidirectional inclusion,” which reconceptualizes inclusion as a reciprocal and relational process of participation across general and special education contexts. This framework challenges one-directional support models and provides a theoretical lens for understanding how agency, learning, and career pathways are co-constructed, contributing to international discussions on inclusive career development and social justice. Another key dimension of his research is the analysis of “temporal governance” in education. Drawing on sociological theories of time and institutional organization, Nakashima demonstrates how standardized temporal structures—such as fixed instructional time, age-graded progression, and uniform assessment cycles—shape participation and constrain transitions. His work highlights temporal redesign as a critical yet underexplored dimension of inclusive career guidance systems. Methodologically, Nakashima employs qualitative and comparative case study approaches based on multi-site fieldwork in Japan. His research integrates interviews with educators and career guidance professionals, classroom observations, and document analysis to examine how institutional arrangements influence learners’ participation and transition outcomes. Importantly, his work bridges theory and practice by identifying how collaborative models between schools can move beyond ad hoc accommodation toward sustainable institutional transformation. These insights contribute to the development of practice-informed and policy-relevant approaches to career guidance. Nakashima’s research offers theoretically grounded and empirically informed contributions to international debates on inclusive transitions, lifelong learning, and socially just career development, with relevance to diverse and culturally responsive contexts such as Aotearoa New Zealand.

Kate is currently Principal Advisor for the Careers and System Integration team at the Tertiary Education Commission, New Zealand. Kate has a background in evaluation, research and strategic planning across a range of government sectors, leading evaluation of TEC's core career products, and the rollout of the National Career System Strategy. She was previously the lead evaluator for a range of social sector initiatives, and designed strategic frameworks and action plans for government programmes. She holds degrees in Education and Sociology.

Ana Cristina Monteiro de Barros de Sena is Head of Wellbeing, Accessibility, and Inclusion at Insper – Institute of Education and Research (Brazil), where she leads initiatives focused on student support, mental health, and inclusive practices in higher education. With a background in psychology, her work is centered on developing integrated and relational approaches to student support, addressing dimensions such as well-being, accessibility, learning, and adaptation throughout the academic journey. She is responsible for the design and implementation of welcoming practices within the Student Life area, contributing to the development of institutional models that promote belonging, autonomy, and student engagement. Ana Cristina has played a key role in structuring Insper’s Welcoming area as a strategic component of the student experience, integrating multidisciplinary perspectives and fostering collaboration across academic and administrative teams. Her work emphasizes early identification of student needs, inclusive practices, and the creation of supportive environments that enable students to navigate academic and personal challenges. Her professional interests include mental health in higher education, accessibility and inclusion, student development, and the role of institutions in shaping more equitable and sustainable academic trajectories. She is actively engaged in initiatives that connect theory and practice in the field of student support and Career Guidance and Counselling.

Jérôme Rossier is currently full professor of vocational and counseling psychology at the University of Lausanne. He studied psychology at the University of Lausanne, Geneva, and at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium and worked at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, at the National Institute of Health, United-States, and at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is the past-editor of the International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance (2010-2021) and member of several editorial boards of scientific journals such as the Journal of Vocational Behavior or the Journal of Research in Personality. His teaching areas and research interests include counseling, personality, psychological assessment, and cross-cultural psychology. He published about 240 scientific articles and book chapters and among other co-edited in 2015 the Handbook of life design: From practice to theory and from theory to practice and in 2021 a handbook about assessment in a multicultural and multilinguistic context. He participated to many national and international research projects (several in West Africa or other regions of the world) funded by the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d) or Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). He has been a member of several boards of experts for the Swiss Confederation and the Swiss National Science Foundation and for institutions from other countries and has held different leadership positions (head of the Institute of Psychology 2010-2015, vice-dean for research 2016-2021, vice-rector for human resources 2021-2026).

Studies: Psychology and Educational Sciences in Scotland, France and Poland. Research: France, Scotland, Luxembourg. Employment: Luxembourg, France, Scotland, Germany. Head of the multinational Luxembourg based Applied Vocational Psychology and Policy research unit (founded in 2005); guest lecturer at the University of Applied Labour Studies, Mannheim, Germany. Active collaboration in many EU / Federal Employment Agency funded research projects.

Since 2021: Working at a public high school in Japan Since 2025: Enrolled in a master’s program at the University of Tsukuba Currently in the second year of the master’s program

Tece is the Programme Director of Software Engineering degrees (Game Programming and Artificial Intelligence) and Bachelor of Information Technology degree and a Senior Lecturer at the Games Department of Media Design School at Strayer in Auckland, New Zealand. She has a PhD in computer science from University of Auckland, and her main research areas are games for health, games for impact, and game development education. Prior to pivoting to an academic career and teaching game development at Media Design School at Strayer, she held a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering and worked as a software engineer in the defence industry in Türkiye. She has an infinite curiosity for the intersection between technology and human condition, is a tinkerer, a fan of science fiction and Forgotten Realms. She is an advocate for diversity of culture, talents and thoughts and has been organising an event called Girls in Games since 2013. Girls in Games aims to encourage young girls to consider games as a career path and bring attention to STEAM subjects.

Brian Thompson is Chief Executive Officer of Addington Raceway and Events Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a PhD candidate. His research focuses on mid-life career transitions among hotel executives, drawing on both academic theory and industry leadership experience in hospitality.

Born in Japan in 1963. Withdrew from Tohoku University Graduate School in 1994 after completing coursework. Awarded a Ph.D. in Education in 2009. Has served as a faculty member at the Faculty of Education, Shiga University since 1995. Appointed professor in 2010.

Dr Jon Woodend is an Assistant Professor in Counselling Psychology at the University of Victoria (Canada), a Registered Psychologist (Alberta), and an Associate Lecturer in the College of Business, Law and Governance at JCU (Australia). His research program is focused on supporting the international career transitions of newcomers (international students and accompanying partners, immigrant workers). Dr Woodend’s research primarily uses qualitative research approaches to understand the lived and contextualised experiences of newcomers, with a theoretical emphasis on systems influences between newcomers and communities. Ms Morgan Begg is a Graduate Student currently completing her Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include the lived experiences of newcomer couples and families, as well as youth’s navigation of career and educational pursuits. Her practice currently focuses on supporting children and youth in school settings.