Frances Valintine (CNZM)

CNZM | Founder, The Mind Lab & Tech Futures Lab | Founder, academyEX | Top 50 Global EdTech Thought-leader | NZ Hall of Fame | Companion NZ Order of Merit | Finalist, New Zealander of the Year

Frances Valintine is the founder of academyEX, which tells you something important about the calibre of thinking she brings to questions of learning and the future of work. Before academyEX, she built The Mind Lab from a single Auckland centre to a nationwide network reaching 40,000 New Zealand children each year, winning Best Start-Up in Asia Pacific in the process. She has a track record of building institutions that actually change things.

Appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2018, she is recognised internationally as one of the Top 50 Global EdTech Thought-leaders, the only New Zealander on that list. She has also founded Tech Futures Lab, adding to a body of institution-building that spans both the school and the postgraduate levels of the education system.

As a Disruptive Technologies speaker at academyEX, she brings the perspective of someone who has built the future of education rather than theorised about it. The combination of founder credibility, national recognition, and global thought leadership makes her one of the most powerful voices in any room she enters.