Kaihautu Moana Maori, academyEX | Serial Entrepreneur | Co-founder, Kotahi.io | Co-founder, Step Into Liquid | Futurist | Master of Commercialisation & Entrepreneurship, University of Auckland
Huw Jones has spent over 20 years demonstrating that the most powerful frameworks for navigating uncertainty do not come from Silicon Valley. They come from whakapapa, community, and Indigenous ways of knowing that have sustained people through change far more disruptive than anything the technology industry has produced. That conviction is not a talking point; it is the foundation of his work.
As Kaihautu Moana Maori at academyEX, he leads the work of embedding Maori and Pasifika thinking into how New Zealand leaders navigate technology, innovation, and the future. Co-founder of Kotahi.io and Step Into Liquid, and a serial entrepreneur in culture tech and founder development, he has the commercial track record to match the cultural intelligence. His Master of Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship from the University of Auckland gives him the academic grounding to hold both.
Both as a speaker for Disruptive Technologies and an advisor for the Master of Technological Futures, he brings a perspective that fundamentally reshapes how learners understand what progress means, and who gets to define it.