In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

Shed 10
Queens Wharf, 89 Quay Street
Auckland CBD
Auckland, Auckland, 1010
New Zealand

Modern Māori Quartet

The suave crooners from the award-winning Modern Māori Quartet invite you to enjoy a fresh take on the classic Māori showbands of yesteryear. Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School alumni James Tito, Maaka Pohatu, Matariki Whatarau and Francis Kora bring the concept of a Māori Rat Pack into the present with a contemporary twist, weaving their acting and musical talents together to fuse hearty and humorous Māori storytelling with the glorious tradition of showband entertainment. Modern Māori Quartet blends old school charm with modern pizzazz to highlight Aotearoa New Zealand’s musical past and present, featuring unique spins on Māori waiata (song), showband hits and pop music, all infused with the multi-talented Māori foursome’s irresistible charisma, sublime harmonies and universal humour.

Adrien Taylor

Adrien is the former environment reporter for 3News (now Newshub). He left his full-time position in Auckland last year to pursue the startup dream. Since then, he’s been to Bangladesh to film a climate change documentary for the United Nations and has gone on to found two companies: furniture procurement website Bamtino and cap company Offcut. Adrien came up with the idea for Offcut on a visit to his father’s textile warehouse in Christchurch. He thought it was ridiculous that so many perfectly good off-cuts were thrown out to landfill, so he got his best mate Matt Purcell involved to launch their range of super limited five panel caps. All Offcut caps are handcrafted in New Zealand and a tree is planted with every cap sold.

Alison Mau

Alison is one of New Zealand’s best known broadcasters. After starting as a cadet newspaper reporter in her hometown of Melbourne, 25 years in top-level television and radio news and current affairs has seen her helm such diverse projects as BBC World Business Report, Breakfast television, national nightly news bulletins, and talkback radio. Although best known for her on-screen work, Alison continues to write for publications on the subjects she’s most passionate about; human rights and social justice in all their forms. In 2012 Alison paired up with Elizabeth Roberts, New Zealand’s pioneer gender reassignment surgery patient, to tell Liz’s extraordinary life story. Their book, First Lady, was published by Upstart Press in September 2015.

Anna Coddington

Anna is one of NZ’s finest musicians known for her enchanting live performances and a voice which “flows perfectly from soft to grunty”. Anna is currently working on her third album which will be the culmination of five years of diligent songwriting and many hours in her home studio, combined with studio sessions at Auckland’s The Lab with some of NZ’s finest musicians. She holds a Master’s Degree in Linguistics, is a former winner of the Smokefree Rockquest as a teen, and has been a finalist for the Silver Scroll numerous times. Anna is a frequent collaborator with the collective Fly My Pretties, a mother, environmentalist, and a second-dan Karate black belt.

Barbara Breen

Barbara is a senior lecturer in the School of Applied Sciences at Auckland University of Technology and has over 20 years’ experience working in government and NGO’s. Her research and personal interests are in geography, ecosystem management, cultural landscapes and spatial ecology. Her research focus has been the identification, selection and management of Protected Areas, using geospatial sciences and novel remote sensing technology, such as drones, to map habitats and landscapes for conservation planning. Barbara’s work has taken her to some of the world’s most remote and unique ecosystems including desert systems in both Antarctica and the Namibia. She is a self confessed techno-nerd and is an advocate for the effective use of drones for good in NZ and beyond.

Cori Gonzalez-Macuer

Billy T Award winning comedian and star of the hit feature film, What We Do In The Shadows, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, as seen on the Old Mout Comedy Gala and a regular on 7 Days, is one of NZ’s finest young comedy talents. The last year has seen him attend the prestigious Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals as part of the What We Do In The Shadows team as well as attending the film’s U.S. premiere in New York, whereafter, he performed massive shows across New York and L.A.

David Harvey

David is a District Court Judge, an educator and an award winning academic on legal and information communications technology matters. As a District Court Judge, he presided over all criminal jury trials and judge alone criminal matters, civil proceedings and in the Youth Court. His involvement with the New Zealand Court on information technology initiatives began in 1990, and has continued to influence his academic writing. Judge Harvey has presented a number of papers both in New Zealand and internationally on law and technology matters, especially in the field of how technology can improve court and judicial processes, as well as access to justice. David’s blog is a unique insight to a top level new legal decision making in an increasingly fast changing world.

Georgia Lala

Georgia is trying to change the way we look at sustainability. Her award winning research into the applications of aquaponics won her the Prime Minister’s Future Scientist award, and at the age of 18 she started her own business, Root Aquaponics, where she hopes to start selling aquaponic units she designed to homes and schools in New Zealand. An environmentalist at heart, Georgia has led sustainability expos to educate others on the importance of future proofing today’s industries, and has been invited as a guest speaker at community events. Georgia hopes to challenge the way individuals and companies look at adopting sustainable approaches to both production and living.

Grace Clapham

Grace is an award winning entrepreneur, born to Indonesian and Australian parents. Having lived in multiple countries across the globe she is passionate about connecting people to themselves and the world around them in order to catalyse change and re-design their lives with meaning. She is a purpose driven individual, a Third Culture Kid and a multi-hyphenate who wears many hats. She has built strong communities across Southeast Asia, such as Secret {W} Business, CreativeMornings Singapore and SheSays Singapore. In 2009, she founded her first company Agent Grace, a boutique agency, where she helps companies navigate the Asia Pacific region. In 2013 she Co-Founded The Change School, a school to help individuals align values and life choices.

Ian McCrae

Ian began his professional career employed as a scientist writing mathematical models of the human body, before moving into the commercial world. In 1993 he founded Orion Health with a team of just four people and has grown the company to over 1,250 staff in 27 offices worldwide, enabling healthcare to more than 90 million patients worldwide. Ian is passionate about the role that technology can play in enabling highly personalised care for individuals through the practice of precision medicine – using personal healthcare information that is captured and made available in real time. This technology will transform the practice of medicine into a mathematical science, and for a lapsed mathematician like Ian that means the health sector just got a whole lot more interesting.

James Bergin

James is the Chief Architect at ASB bank and father of three young children. As a father, James has a keen interest in financial literacy and the challenge of teaching new generations about money. He believes that as money becomes less tangible in our digital world, we need to find new ways of using technology to impart good money habits to our kids in order to increase their financial well-being. At ASB James is helping the 168-year-old bank to rethink itself as a tech company, licensed and trusted to provide financial services.

Jayne Bailey

Jayne has been described as many things; a brave adventurer, a visionary, an infectious truth-teller, a teacher, a mentor and an encourager. She has experienced bible smuggling into China, overland trucking in Africa, micro lighting over Victoria Falls, bathing elephants in Nepal, hot air ballooning in Cappadocia, walking part of the Camino de Santiago, trekking in the Himalayas, and horse riding in Turkey, Argentina and the length of New Zealand. In 2011, Jayne started her new adventure, a charity called Project Moroto which provides safe dormitory living for orphaned girls in Moroto, Uganda. She has provided a haven for 20 gorgeous girls, but what Jayne is most passionate about is giving these girls a “go”- an opportunity to find and fulfil their potential.

Jess Holly Bates

Jess is a theatre practitioner, vulnerability junkie, writer and artist, who loves to communicate cultural criticism through performance. She investigates the way our bodies behave in social relations, particularly in relation to our ongoing colonial hangover in New Zealand. In 2014 her acclaimed solo theatre show Real Fake White Dirt, (Best Writing NZ Fringe 2015) was published as a book of poetry by Anahera Press. She believes that the only way to acknowledge our difficult history is to lean into the real discomfort of being Pakeha. Her 2016 work The Offensive Nipple Show is a collaborative body project responding to the dangerous ways gender politics are disconnecting us from one another. Through performance, she seeks to find new ways of looking at each others bodies, that are both cheeky and empowering.

Keith Ng

As a young man, Keith dreamed of being a hobo-journalist – seeing the world and telling stories while living out of a sack. But what started out as a naive warzone adventure turned into lifelong vendetta and alternative funding model for independent journalism. It has been almost a decade, and these days Keith does data visualisation consulting to fund his journalism projects, with the thought of sustainable crowdfunding just over the horizon. The independence from self-funding (“Batman journalism!”) creates a wonderful and dangerous space for innovation, disruption, getting lost and going crazy. If he’s lucky, one day, it might even allow him to live out of a sack.

Lizzie Marvelly

While Lizzie Marvelly traverses many diverse paths, her journey started with her love for music. Discovered by Frankie Stevens and her famous uncle, Sir Howard Morrison, in her early teens, Lizzie was on the road at age 16 – since then her musical life has been a wild ride. In May 2015, Lizzie launched Villainesse.com, an online media project aiming to create smart, ‘no-filter’ media for young women. Villainesse is on a mission to empower young women and to hear more young female voices represented in the media. Later that year, Lizzie launched Villainesse’s first major campaign, the globally-successful #MyBodyMyTerms. The #MyBodyMyTerms videos have been viewed over 450,000 times and aimed to spark conversation about victim-blaming, revenge porn, consent and sexual violence.

Matt Shirtcliffe

Father of two teens, awarded advertising creative director, ad agency owner, mountain runner, farm owner, poet, Christian. Matt was living a full and rewarding life last year when it profoundly changed last year. His wife of 17 years Mary, a farmer, died of depression. Searching for something good to come from his grief, Matt used his own experiences to speak out about mental health in the rural community. He wasn’t prepared for the impact it would have or the enormity of the response. The journey since has reframed his own life in positive ways.

Megan May

Megan is the chef and creator behind little bird organics and the unbakery cafes, has authored a bestselling cookbook and recipe app. Her multifaceted business is a culmination of her passion for organic plant based wholefoods, of taking ownership of your health and environmental sustainability through a plant based diet, and a love of great tasting food. Megan believes that our health, the workplace, the environment, the market and politics are all impacted by what we eat each day.

Michael Moka

Michael is the founder of Indigenous Growth – a new organisation with a quadruple bottom line – which feeds his passion to empower families like his to get themselves out of the poverty cycle. Since 2005 he chose a specialised path dedicated to this goal of serving his family and families like his. Indigenous Growth takes a culturally diverse approach, building their people from the grassroots level to provide a more diverse and profitable culture for all organisations. Mike holds a number of governance and advisory roles for Whanau Organisations, Charities, Learning Institutions and Not for Profit organisations.

Minnie Baragwanath

Minnie is CEO and co-founder of Be. Accessible, a social change agency that is shifting how Kiwis value accessibility and the contribution to our world by people with access needs. This vibrant and innovative approach to social change has caught the attention of government, business, entrepreneurs and communities throughout New Zealand and the world. At it’s heart Be. Accessible is moving the emphasis from a notion of disability to Poss-ability, from deficit to strength, from disempowerment to leadership! Values of creativity, positivity, flexibility and generosity are at the heart of this social movement and underpin the work of Be. Minnie was a recipient of the Sir Peter Blake Leadership award 2013 and was made a Member of the NZ Order of Merit Queens Honour in 2014.

Pani Farvid

Pani is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Auckland University of Technology. For over a decade, Pani has researched the intersection of gender, power, culture, sexuality and identity – largely focusing on how heterosexuality plays out in domains such as casual sex, online dating, mass media and the New Zealand sex industry. She is currently focusing on examining mobile dating, in order to explore how such technology is (re)shaping intimate relations in the 21st century. Her work seeks to dismantle the rigid gender binaries associated with heterosexuality. She is a regular media commentator on issues related to gender, sexuality, gender equality and sexism.

Richard Aston

Richard put his IT and business skills to good use when he bailed out of the corporate world and took over the reins of Big Buddy in 2002. It’s taken focus, will-power and trust to grow an organisation that matches male volunteers with fatherless boys. But Richard’s source lies in the values of the hippy movement he grew out of – his strongest belief is around the strength of human caring; he believes passionately that most anyone and anything can be healed when humans step up to care deeply for each other without judgement or expectation. Richard is also chair of Consumer NZ, a Vodafone World of Difference award winner and is a passionate father, grandfather, celebrant, gardener and author.

Richard Little

Richard is a multi-award winning inventor and engineer with over 30 patents to his name, in the past Richard has held a range of Directorships, C level and other senior positions in a range of engineering, military and medical businesses. Richard started REX Bionics in 2007 which listed in 2014 on the UK AIM stock exchange. His latest venture, Exsurgo Rehab, has been formed with a team of experienced medical device experts to to deliver technology solutions that will alleviate the suffering and improve the quality of life of potentially millions of stroke sufferers worldwide.

Rory Steyn

After rising through the ranks of the South African police force, Rory was appointed to the Presidential Protection Unit in 1996, and was made team leader of President Nelson Mandela’s personal security detail, handling the protection of the former President both nationally and internationally. Rory watched Mandela, up close and personal, as he led the racially divided nation from the brink of bloodshed to unexpected levels of peace and stability. What Rory learnt from the man, once seen as a terrorist by South African authorities, changed his life forever.

Samuel Gibson

Born with a rare condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta and has broken nearly every bone in his body. Wheelchairs and broken bones are part of life for Samuel, though for those who know Samuel, ‘Disabled’ would one of the least appropriate words to describe him. World traveller, Adventurer, Entrepreneur, Husband, Father of two gorgeous little girls – Samuel considers himself the luckiest boy in the world. Samuel is part of a wheelchair design partnership that is changing the lives around world in the most practical way. Physical independence is something Samuel is very passionate about and sees it as one of the most basic of human rights.

Sharad Paul

Dr. Sharad P. Paul is an academic specialising in skin cancer surgery, both in New Zealand and Australia. His Skin Surgery Clinic has one of the largest series of skin cancer patients worldwide, with over 100,000 consultations and 35,000 operations since the clinic was established in 1996. Award winning Sharad has served on the National Commission of UNESCO, and teaches creative writing to disadvantaged children by personally visiting schools once a week, and by funding school libraries. These initiatives are supported through the model of social entrepreneurship created by projects such as The Baci Lounge, an award-winning bookstore, within his own Baci Foundation.

Solonia Teodros

Born to Taiwanese and Ethiopian parents, with life chapters spanning the US and Asia, Solonia considers herself a citizen of the world. Her life work endeavors to instill the belief that today’s global community offers endless possibilities in pursuit of purpose, meaning and self-actualization. Through her advisory SolWorks, she helps purpose-driven organisations to design, develop and amplify their initiatives. She previously worked with The Hub Singapore to launch the DBS-Hub Social Entrepreneurship Bootcamps in Singapore, Cambodia and Malaysia. Solonia founded The Hawker Sessions and launched the Singapore chapters of global initiatives The Worldwide Feast, Jane’s Walk and is now the co-founder of The Change School.

Toby Carr

Toby is a entrepreneur and change maker at his core. Since starting his first registered company aged 14, Toby has been challenging and questioning the status quo for business and education. After founding and being a part of many startups, he believes strongly in choosing your own path of purpose. Toby trades in the Computers and Technology space with DeXTech, providing innovative and modern solutions to a variety of customers, including the education sector. A frequent speaker on business and technology.

Vaughan Rowsell

Vaughan is the Founder of Vend, a cloud based retail software for small to medium retailers worldwide. The Vend team hold three core values dearly in their hearts; to delight retailers, to do the impossible, and to take care of one another. Vaughan also co-founded OMG Tech! an initiative to encourage kids of all backgrounds, genders, and ages to get into technology. It not only covers coding, but all newly developed technology such as robots, drones, nanotech, teleportation and hover-boards. They give kids the chance to explore and get inspired by technology that they will be experts in ten years from now. He dreams big and likes to set himself impossible challenges; whether it is cycling the length of New Zealand solo, running 1,000 kilometres, or building a $100M venture.