Our Humans

Diverse humans.
Diverse experience.

Transformation is delivered by people. We bring a vast range of diverse humans and diverse experience, so you can pick exactly the experience the transformation at hand needs: a piece of work, a project, a programme, simple contracting, or a collective team bringing their combined experience together to solve your challenges and drive the transformation for your objectives.

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The bench

Proven humans, ready to engage.

Public profiles are anonymised out of respect for our humans and their current engagements. Every capability and every number is real. Pick a title to view the profile, then talk to us and we will connect you directly.

Profile HM-01

CDAO / CAIO

A senior data and information executive who builds enterprise data, information and AI functions from the ground up: strategy, governance, architecture and the delivery that makes them real. Nearly two decades inside large, highly regulated institutions, translating complex, fragmented data landscapes into trusted intelligence that executives and boards act on. People first, always: capability that outlasts the engagement.

Key achievements

  • Led an institution's first data and information strategy, lifting organisational maturity from 1.5 out of 5 to between 3 and 4 out of 5.
  • Recognised with an international industry award for that strategy, its people-centric delivery and the digital transformation around it.
  • Grew a permanent team from 3 to 20 FTE across information and records management, data governance, and data platform and architecture.
  • Led two enterprise transformation programmes concurrently: a cloud data and analytics platform with a delivery team of 13, and a next-generation records management replacement with a delivery team of 12.
  • Drafted the AI policy, governance framework, strategy and roadmap for a central government agency.
  • Drove an exemplary result in a national regulatory audit of information management practice, positioning the team as a sector leader.

Where they have worked

  • 2026
    Senior AI advisor, contractCentral government agency
  • 2022 - 2025
    Executive lead, information and data managementMajor banking institution
  • 2018 - 2022
    Data ArchitectMajor banking institution
  • 2006 - 2018
    Senior Analyst ProgrammerMajor banking institution
  • Governance
    TrusteeCommunity education trust

BSc Computer Science · AI for business mini-MBA · Principles of Maori governance

Data & information strategyAI strategy & governanceResponsible AIEnterprise data architectureRecords & information managementPrivacy Act & records complianceExecutive & board reporting
Talk to us about HM-01
Profile HM-02

Fractional CIO and Portfolio Transformation Leader

A technology and transformation leader with more than 30 years across health, finance, media, telecommunications and shared services. Operates as a fractional CIO, head of delivery or programme director: portfolio optimisation, PMO establishment and uplift, operating models, governance, cybersecurity and cloud. Known for pragmatic leadership and for building delivery teams that lift the whole organisation's execution.

Key achievements

  • Cut a technology portfolio from 300 initiatives to 25 strategic priorities, increasing delivery capacity by 75%.
  • Led a NZ$15m shared services technology portfolio and a team of 25 project managers, programme managers and business analysts as head of delivery and interim CTO.
  • Ran a NZ$1.8m multi-cloud transformation programme with projected savings of NZ$3.5m over five years.
  • Established a Security Operations Centre and led cybersecurity uplift programmes, including remediation for network-enabled medical devices.
  • Built and transformed PMO, programme and business analysis capability across multiple organisations and industries.
  • Produced steering-committee governance, sequencing and business case material for a major people-systems transformation.

Where they have worked

  • 2026
    Transformation consultant, people systemsLarge Crown entity
  • 2025 - now
    Principal ConsultantBoutique AI advisory firm
  • 2024
    Programme ManagerGlobal media and entertainment company
  • 2021 - 2024
    Delivery executive and interim CTOLarge consumer services organisation
  • 2017 - 2021
    Programme and portfolio leadMajor public health provider
  • 1994 - 2017
    Senior delivery and PMO leadership rolesA global telecommunications company, a major trans-Tasman bank, a global enterprise software company, a big-four professional services firm, a major entertainment group, a major broadcaster, a major insurer and a major airline
Fractional CIOPortfolio & programme managementPMO establishment & upliftOperating modelsGovernance & investment prioritisationCybersecurity & cloud transformationBusiness casesChange leadership
Talk to us about HM-02
Profile HM-03

AI Transformation Lead / CDAO

A technology strategist and executive specialising in emerging technology, data and AI, with more than two decades leading multinational teams. Has operated as chief technology officer, chief AI officer, global VP of data and AI, and AI transformation lead inside a global food and beverage producer. Equally at home authoring enterprise AI policy, chairing architecture boards and shipping production AI that moves the numbers. A regular keynote speaker and panellist on the Asia-Pacific data and AI circuit, recognised as an APAC AI first mover by a global cloud provider, and a member of the AI Forum of New Zealand.

Key achievements

  • Architected an agentic AI and digital automation platform for one of the largest banks in the Middle East, cutting customer risk investigations from over an hour to under 10 minutes.
  • Delivered a financial-crime real-time digital analyst that reduced false-positive alerts from over 90% to below 30%.
  • Authored the global AI policy for a global food and beverage producer, chaired the AI architecture board approving every AI initiative across it, and delivered a safe, internally grounded generative AI assistant for its people.
  • Drove the digital and data strategy that carried a global legal technology company past US$10m in annual recurring revenue, on a lakehouse platform spanning five public cloud regions and one private government cloud.
  • Shipped production generative AI products: a legal assistant that interrogates, redlines and summarises documents, computer-vision invoice and contract extraction, and a no-code AI workflow builder published as APIs.
  • Built IoT and telemetry platforms processing 5,000 records per second (200 million a day) with real-time safety alerting for mining operations, including collision and dangerous-gas early warning.

Where they have worked

  • 2025 - now
    Technology executive leadInternational financial-automation technology company
  • 2024 - 2026
    AI transformation and principal AI architecture leadGlobal food and beverage producer · contract
  • 2024 - 2025
    AI executive leadNew Zealand AI startup
  • 2022 - 2024
    Global data and AI executiveGlobal legal technology company
  • 2021 - 2022
    Practice Lead, Data and AIGlobal consultancy, NZ and US practices
  • 2019 - 2021
    Data and Insights LeadNew Zealand technology consultancy, including central government projects
  • 2018 - 2019
    Head of DataInternational telematics and IoT company
  • Governance
    Board MemberTechnology education charity

National Diploma in Information Technology · Certified Data Vault Data Modeler (Mastery) · Cloud data warehousing certified · Year-long leadership development programme

AI transformationAI strategy & architectureAgentic AIGenerative AI in productionData platforms & lakehouseAI governance & policyExecutive leadership: CTO, CAIO, CDAOVendor & partner management
Talk to us about HM-03
Profile HM-04

CTO / MS Specialist

A hands-on technology executive with three decades across transport, telecommunications and global IT outsourcing, from enterprise and infrastructure architecture to head-of-operations leadership. Deep Microsoft specialisation across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure, including enterprise strategy programmes delivered with Microsoft directly. Known for unblocking stalled programmes, running critical infrastructure under real pressure, and earning the organisation's highest employee engagement score while doing it.

Key achievements

  • Achieved the highest employee engagement score across the whole organisation, 95%, while leading cloud and IT delivery teams.
  • Delivered refreshed data centre capability for high availability, disaster recovery and zero-downtime delivery, and upgraded core network and compute for a large-scale public transport ticketing project across three global locations after a cyber incident, with zero impact to the timeline.
  • Led the Microsoft estate end to end: Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure operations, vendor enterprise strategy programmes, and an all-of-government Microsoft licensing outcome generating significant cost savings.
  • Cut new-hire IT onboarding from 2 to 4 hours to under 30 minutes with a fully managed, automated desktop environment.
  • Built the greenfields Day 1 IT environment for a newly formed transport organisation: architecture, frameworks, transition plans and middleware platform selection, delivered on time for launch day.
  • A decade of APAC enterprise architecture with a global IT outsourcing provider: solution architect on the successful outsourcing contract with a global food and beverage producer, and approval authority for all midrange capital spend across the Asia Pacific region.

Where they have worked

  • 2025
    Technical operations leadMajor transport organisation
  • 2023 - 2025
    Senior manager, cloud and IT deliveryMajor transport organisation
  • 2022 - 2023
    Acting lead, cloud and IT deliveryMajor transport organisation
  • 2015 - 2022
    Emerging technology leadMajor transport organisation
  • 2009 - 2015
    Contract CTO and IT architecture rolesTransport sector agencies, including a programme that stood up a new organisation
  • 1999 - 2008
    Enterprise architect, capability manager and technical leadGlobal IT services and outsourcing provider, Asia Pacific
  • 1997 - 1999
    Senior technical consultantMajor telecommunications provider

BSc Computer Science and Physics · IEEE and IEEE Computer Society member · ISO 9001 auditor certified · Registered Electrical Professional

Contract / fractional CTOMicrosoft 365, Dynamics 365 & AzureCloud & IT operationsEnterprise & infrastructure architectureData centre, network & DRITSM, tenders & vendor managementBudget & financial managementEmerging technology
Talk to us about HM-04
Profile HM-05

PhD AI Platform Developer

A doctorally trained AI engineer who builds the working machinery behind generative AI: agentic workflows, MCP servers, retrieval augmented generation and the knowledge graphs that keep answers grounded. Four years of doctoral research went into one hard problem, turning unstructured documents into structured, queryable knowledge, and that research now sits underneath production AI agents built for business use. Deploys on Azure AI and Google Cloud Vertex AI, in Python, across vector and graph databases. The human you want when the demo has to become a platform, and when a wrong answer is not an acceptable outcome.

Key achievements

  • Builds and ships agentic AI workflows in production, deploying large language models on both Azure AI and Google Cloud Vertex AI, with orchestration, tool use and function calling through LiteLLM and MCP servers.
  • Completed a four-year doctoral research programme in document understanding and knowledge extraction, training BERT-based transformer models to pull structured knowledge out of PDF documents and assemble it into knowledge graphs.
  • Implemented retrieval augmented generation grounded on a knowledge graph rather than vector search alone, so answers stay accurate and faithful to the source material, which is what matters wherever a wrong answer carries consequences.
  • Built a knowledge-graph question answering system for causation research at a leading New Zealand university: named entity and relation extraction feeding LLM-grounded question answering, improving the efficiency of the diagnostic workflow.
  • Led machine-learning remaining useful life prediction for industrial machinery, forecasting how much operating life equipment has left before it fails.
  • Built a reporting and visualisation platform in SQL, Python and Tableau to track operational KPIs across a manufacturing business.

Where they have worked

  • 2024 - now
    AI Developer, Agentic WorkflowsNew Zealand AI startup
  • 2023 - 2024
    Research Assistant, Knowledge Graphs and LLM Question AnsweringLeading New Zealand university
  • 2020 - 2024
    Doctoral Researcher, Document Understanding and RAGLeading New Zealand university
  • 2018 - 2019
    Data Analyst, Machine Learning and Business IntelligenceGlobal industrial engine and heavy machinery manufacturer, China

PhD Mechanical Engineering, doctoral research in document understanding, knowledge extraction and retrieval augmented generation · MSc Mechanical Engineering · BSc Mechanical Engineering

Agentic AI workflowsMCP servers & tool useRetrieval augmented generation (RAG)Knowledge graphs, Neo4jVector databases, WeaviateAzure AI & Azure OpenAIGoogle Cloud Vertex AIPython: FastAPI, FastMCP, LiteLLMPrompt engineering & fine-tuningTransformers & NLP, BERTPostgreSQL & SupabaseDocument understanding & information extractionPredictive maintenance machine learningSQL & Tableau dashboards
Talk to us about HM-05
Profile HM-06

CIO / Transformation Manager

A senior technology executive with more than 20 years leading shared-services technology across multi-entity, multi-stakeholder organisations: the environments where several business units, competing priorities and distinct leadership teams all need to share infrastructure, security and data without losing local agility. Most recently a regional CIO across roughly 40 companies in seven Asia-Pacific markets. Works directly with chief executives, chief financial officers and boards, making the commercial case for technology investment in language they actually use, and is focused on redesigning how organisations operate around what AI can now do autonomously, not bolting AI on top of what already exists.

Key achievements

  • Led a group-wide ISO 27001 certification programme across eight companies and 500+ employees, delivered in nine months and among the first of its kind in the region's marketing services sector, unlocking a $25m annual revenue stream.
  • Led technology due diligence and integration for six acquisitions, onboarding 100+ employees with zero business disruption and delivering $450k in annual synergies through vendor consolidation and infrastructure rationalisation.
  • Led a complete cloud re-architecture for a market research division, cutting cloud costs by more than 50% while enabling advanced analytics and maintaining audit compliance.
  • Built and led a governed generative AI platform deployed to 1,000+ users globally, and a group-wide employee mobile app and portal serving 1,700+ employees across two countries.
  • Reduced total IT costs by more than $480k annually through vendor consolidation and cloud optimisation, while transforming the technology financial model from CapEx to OpEx.
  • Secured approval for a first-of-its-kind AI-generated brand campaign, navigating security, legal, ethics and governance requirements across a seven-market region.

Where they have worked

  • 2025 - now
    Independent AI governance and workflow-automation projectsCareer break, primary carer
  • 2025
    Regional technology executive, Asia-PacificGlobal advertising and marketing holding company
  • 2016 - 2025
    Group technology executive, shared-services leadershipMajor New Zealand marketing services holding company
  • 2009 - 2016
    National IT ManagerMajor New Zealand marketing services holding company
  • 2006 - 2009
    National IT ManagerMarketing and direct-response agency
  • 1999 - 2006
    IT ManagerGlobal advertising agency network, London

Executive leadership development programme · Management fundamentals executive education · Te Kaa Cultural Leadership Programme · ITIL V3 Foundations · Microsoft MCSE · Google AI Professional · Business computing qualification

Technology vision & strategyDigital & AI transformationEnterprise programme deliveryM&A integration & change managementCybersecurity & risk, ISO 27001Cloud architecture, AWS & AzureData platforms & analyticsAI governance & autonomous workflowsGenerative AI, LLMs & custom GPTsVendor management & negotiationPrivacy Act 2020 & data governanceExecutive & board communicationTeam building & performance leadership
Talk to us about HM-06
How you engage

Shape the engagement around the outcome.

Start with the transformation at hand. We shape the people around it.

A piece of work

A defined deliverable with a clear outcome. One human, in, done, and capability left behind.

A project

A delivery lead or specialist embedded in your project team, accountable for landing it.

A programme

Senior leadership for multi-stream, multi-vendor programmes under real governance and scrutiny.

Simply contracting

Straightforward contracting when you know what you need and simply want proven capacity.

A collective team

A hand-picked team whose diverse experience combines as a collective to solve your challenges end to end.

Pick the experience. We bring the humans.

Tell us the transformation at hand and the outcome you need. We will shape the engagement around it: one human, several, or a collective team. Mention the profile code and we will connect you directly.

Talk to us