Asha Jacob is an educator and emerging leader in career development with a strong commitment to empowering young people to explore meaningful future pathways. With experience supporting intermediate and secondary learners, Asha brings a practical, student-centred approach to career education that prioritises curiosity, identity, and real-world connection. Asha is passionate about bridging the gap between education and the world beyond school. She actively supports project-based learning, community partnerships, and authentic experiences that allow young people to see themselves in a wide range of pathways. Through her work, she aims to ensure all learners regardless of context, have access to meaningful guidance and opportunities that help them navigate their futures with purpose and agency. Trudy Harrison, brings cultural leadership and a strong commitment to weaving Māori perspectives, values, and aspirations through careers education. Her work focuses on culturally responsive practice, meaningful partnerships with whānau and hapori, and supporting young people to navigate their futures with confidence and cultural pride.

Sam’s work is in “mirroring alternate futures”; guiding and coaching clients to advance in business and their chosen careers. A private career practitioner since 1995, an NMIT & AUT lecturer since 2007, Sam is a member of CATE, APCDA, NCDA, CDANZ (Fellow), with M.Mgt, DipCareerDev, and CertAdultTeaching qualifications.

Pratishtha Purohit is a career strategist, intercultural communication trainer, and founder of EduventureNZ, a FernMark-licensed organisation supporting international students and migrants to thrive in Aotearoa New Zealand. A former international student herself, she is known for making the invisible visible in career development: helping learners understand not only what to do in a new country, but what is happening inside them while they are trying to do it. Her work sits at the intersection of Te Whare Tapa Whā, values-driven career practice, and Cultural Intelligence (CQ). As a CQ Certified Train-the-Trainer, Pratishtha integrates career theory, holistic wellbeing, and lived experience to support learners through identity disruption, belonging, confidence loss, and major career transition. Rather than treating these as personal failings, she translates theory into practical, human, and culturally responsive tools that help people make meaning of change. With more than two decades of experience across government, education, community, and workforce development, Pratishtha designs programmes that move beyond information into interpretation. Her work empowers international students and migrants to navigate the invisible grief, emotional labour, and identity reconstruction that often accompany transition, while building agency, belonging, and career confidence. She is deeply committed to decolonising and democratising career development so learners feel less broken, more understood, and better equipped to thrive.

Craig has been involved in career education and guidance for the past 30 years. Setting up the 'Highway to Your Future' programme for Studylink, he then spent the next 14 years in student recruitment for Student Job Search, The University of Auckland, and Lincoln University. His Masters thesis Where to from here?: University liaison services and how they influence student decision-making in tertiary institutional choice' has been used in educational settings to shape direction of student recruitment activities from secondary - tertiary education. Professionally, Craig has sat on steering committees looking at the future of Careers in New Zealand, most recently with the Ministerial group for the New Zealand Careers Action Plan, and has been invited to be on the New Zealand Qualification Authority panel for the review of Core Generic Employability Skills Unit Standards. Craig is the Immediate Past President of the Careers and Transition Educators Association NZ after completing his four year tenure as President. He has also sat as a committee member for the New Zealand Association of Psychology Teachers. When not advocating for change, Craig is the Specialist Leader of Careers and Pathways at Albany Senior High School for the past 16 years.

Prajesh Chhanabhai is a transformational coach, facilitator, and leadership trainer with over two decades of experience working at the intersection of human behaviour, identity, and career development. Based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, Prajesh has built his entire body of work around a single conviction: that the most important career question is never "what should I do?", it is always "who am I?" For more than 20 years, Prajesh has worked with young people navigating some of the most pivotal transitions of their lives, from school to further study, from study to vocation, and from uncertainty to a sense of direction. Over that time he has worked with thousands of students across secondary and tertiary settings, sitting with them through moments of confusion, comparison, and self-doubt. What he witnessed consistently across those thousands of conversations was not a lack of options or information, it was a lack of self-knowledge. Young people were trying to navigate a future without a clear sense of who was doing the navigating. That insight became the foundation of everything Prajesh does. Identity, how we see ourselves, how we move through the world, what we naturally gravitate toward and what quietly drains us, sits at the heart of every conversation, every workshop, and every piece of work Prajesh delivers. It is this lens that drew him to behavioural profiling as a discipline, and specifically to Extended DISC as a framework capable of giving both practitioners and the people they serve a shared, accessible language for understanding natural behavioural style. When students understand their own identity more clearly, career conversations shift from overwhelming to orienting. Today, Prajesh is the founder of Phambili Coaching and Mindfluence, through which he delivers executive coaching, leadership development, and coach education across Aotearoa New Zealand. He is an ICF-accredited facilitator, a certified Extended DISC practitioner, and an assessor in a Masters of Coaching programme. He is also the host of the Baskets of Knowledge podcast and the author of the LinkedIn newsletter Mindset Matters, where he writes about identity, mindset, and the inner game of leadership and career for a growing international audience.

Mr. Raza Abbas is fortunate to have spoken as a keynote speaker and facilitated impactful workshops at leading learning forums across the globe and nationally. He earned excellence at training sessions in United States, Canada, Brazil, Oman, Spain, Germany, Uzbekistan, Philippines, Japan, South Korea, China, Poland, South Africa, Indonesia. He has trained, inspired 50,000+ professionals and youth in diverse industries, i.e., banking, insurance, media, textiles, healthcare, development, and higher education. With humility and gratitude, he was nominated for Pakistan's Highest Presidential civil award: Pride of Performance. Since 2017, he has represented Pakistan at the UNESCO-APEID flagship meeting on Entrepreneurship Education in the Asia region. Global recipient of multiple career development international awards from eminent global career development associations: National Career Development Association -NCDA and Asia Pacific Career Development Association-APCDA. He serves on the IAEVG Board. He is profiled in the global best-seller ‘The World Book of Hope’ from Pakistan. Raza is Certified Confident Career Conservations Facilitator from Antoinette Oglethorpe Ltd.

Ingrid Bårdsdatter Bakke is an associate professor at Inland Norway University in Lillehammer. Her research focuses on Norwegian and Nordic work culture and how it influences career guidance, policy and the professionalisation of career guidance practice, green guidance, integrated guidance and career guidance within the welfare system. She lectures on the Master’s programme in Career Guidance and supervises students on the Master’s programme and the HELVEL PhD programme. She lectures on career theory, career guidance, national culture, policy and professionalisation. Bakke has participated in the Exploring Green Guidance for Inland University and will present the project and the resouces on behalf of the project partners Tristram Hooley, Eva Kavkova, Marta Wrzosek, Ladislav Ostroha, Helena Kostalova, Mariana Lucas Casanova, Tomas Sprlak, Klaudua Stano, Izabela Przybysz, Alicja Maszk.

Jamie Fitzgerald is an Executive Leadership Fellow and Distinguished Alumnus at the University of Waikato, and CEO of his consultancy business, Inspiring Performance. He is passionate about helping people realise their potential by co-creating an inspiring purpose, effective goal setting, and communication. Jamie is an avid adventurer. He has walked unaided to the South Pole and holds the world record for rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. In 2011, Jamie managed the design and delivery of training to 6000+ Rugby World Cup 2011 volunteers.

Nicki Trueman is an Employability Specialist at Auckland International Campus, a partnership between Otago Polytechnic and Future Skills. As a career's professional, she is committed to a people-centred approach, supporting individuals in navigating their career journeys and developing the skills needed for future success. Nicki is passionate about empowering learners to build confidence in their abilities, particularly when facing challenges or transitions. She values collaboration, continuous learning, and reflective practice, and is dedicated to enhancing employability outcomes through inclusive, student-focused approaches. She supports students through tailored guidance, practical skill development, and creating opportunities for meaningful industry engagement, enabling them to transition confidently into the workforce.

Pamela Bell is the inaugural Sir Mark Dunajtschik Chair and Professor of Advanced Construction at Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington. Her previous role was as Chief Everything Officer at the Building Institute Aotearoa (formerly New Zealand Institute of Building) with a strong focus on the ‘people behind the projects’ and growing building people through directly delivering continuing professional development and opportunities for reward and recognition. She is also an Innovation Consultant and Board Director for a range of start-ups, Council controlled entities, Crown aligned companies, and commercial organisations in the built environment sector. In her time as Chair of the NZ Construction Industry Council (NZCIC), she helped to lead advocacy, belonging and collaboration projects for peak bodies. Pamela is passionate about the intersection between design and business through the lens of innovative sustainable construction methods, affordable housing supply, and added-value timber manufacture. She has subject matter expertise in offsite manufacturing, design-thinking approaches, dynamic strategy, and future-focused governance. Her diverse background spans high performance sport (1998 Olympics), research (‘Kiwi Prefab’ book + exhibition), entrepreneurship (PrefabNZ, Fruition Apparel + NZ Snowboard Academy), and governance (including Urban Plus, Seaview Marina, Abodo Wood, ConCOVE + BRANZ). Pamela founded the peak body for innovative construction, PrefabNZ, in 2010 from her Victoria University of Wellington Master of Architecture thesis ‘Kiwi Prefab’ which was also turned into a book and museum exhibition of the same name. She handed over the reins in 2019 when offsite construction reached a tipping point of awareness for central government, the construction industry, and the public alike. Pamela has been the lucky recipient of several awards including the Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) Alumni Award (2019). As an Adjunct Professor at VUW she investigated the relationship between design and business to showcase more career options for architecture students. She has also explored the interface between design thinking and governance for the boardroom with a series of articles and interactive workshops for the New Zealand Institute of Directors. See more at https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamela-bell-nz/

Chloe Boreham is the founder of Go Arrow and the developer of the Adaptive Work Capacity framework, a practical approach to tracking how people and teams are affected by pressure, change, and disruption, and turning those insights into simple, actionable ways to reduce workplace and system tension and improve engagement. With over 15 years of experience across organisational change, vocational rehabilitation, and workforce development, Chloe works at the intersection of business performance and human behaviour. She has supported both large scale organisational transformation and individuals navigating injury, disruption, and career transition. Through this work, she has observed that what is often labelled as a motivation problem is rarely about motivation alone, but reflects a deeper loss of capacity to respond under pressure. Chloe is a systems thinker who focuses on how work, support systems, and expectations interact to shape behaviour. Her work centres on identifying where engagement begins to break down, often well before it becomes visible as disengagement, resistance, or avoidance. Her approach draws on evidence based models including the Transtheoretical Model of Change, Self Determination Theory, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, alongside vocational rehabilitation practice and Māori informed perspectives such as Te Whare Tapa Whā. She translates these into practical, repeatable methods that help practitioners and organisations recognise early warning signs, reduce system tension, and support more effective and autonomous engagement. Chloe holds a degree majoring in psychology and a postgraduate certificate in health and wellbeing, with a particular interest in motivation and behaviour change. Her work challenges traditional assumptions about “unmotivated” clients and instead focuses on the conditions required for people to re engage with meaningful work. Through her speaking and practice, Chloe aims to help practitioners and organisations better understand disengagement, respond earlier, and create the conditions that make participation in work possible.