Marcus Akuhata-Brown

Marcus Akuhata-Brown grew up on the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand.

His father is from Te Whanau o Tuwhakairiora of Te Araroa on the East Cape, also the tribes of Ngai Tahu, Ngati Kahungunu, Te Aitanga a Mahaki, Rongowhakaata and Ngati Paoa. His mother is a fifth generation New Zealander with European ancestry.

An experienced educator and gifted communicator, Marcus has led a number of innovative programmes around the world. In New Zealand his work has focused on addressing the learning and developmental needs of youth at risk and young offenders.

From 1996 to 2004 Marcus travelled all over the world as an international representative and delegate to multilateral meetings. Marcus was elected to Head the Commonwealth Youth Caucus a position he held for three years and was appointed as a Director on the international board of CIVICUS

Marcus founded Tukaha Global Consultancy Ltd in 2000 and currently divides his time between speaking and consultancy work, hapu and community development activities in his tribal area and studies through Te Wananga o Raukawa, a tribal university.

Keynote Presentation – Lifting The Lid Off Low Expectations
Marcus will be our closing speaker for the conference and will leave you feeling inspired about the importance you, as educators, make in the lives of children.

Marcus will tell his inspiring story of how glass lids of low expectation and achievement were lifted off his life and how through positive encouragement, intuitive goal setting and having the courage to break out of comfort zones led to a life of excitement, adventure and purpose.

Gill Connell TTC, ATCL

Gill Connell has been actively involved in education in New Zealand for over 30 years. She is a primary trained teacher and very experienced in both primary and early childhood education.

Gill is internationally sought after as a keynote speaker and works as a consultant in her own educational business. She regularly runs professional development courses and workshops for early childhood and primary teachers, parents and caregivers.

Gill is the New Zealand teacher trainer for Perceptual Motor Programming (PMP), a movement programme many schools are adopting. She was also a member of the Active Movement reference committee and co-wrote the Active Movement brochures – a resource designed to create an awareness of the importance of movement in early childhood published by SPARC (Sport and Recreation NZ), an initiative administered by the New Zealand government. She currently sits on the national Outdoor Play reference committee.

Gill has been contracted to a large American toy company and advises designers and marketers in the area of child development and movement. She has co-written Swimming NZ’s new infant teacher training manual. She is co-author of the best seller “Moving to Learn”, and also works with early childhood teachers helping them with outdoor play planning and set ups.

Gill is the mother of three gorgeous daughters and now a besotted grandmother!

Keynote Address – Movement and its impact on the growing child
Gill will discuss the importance of movement and its impact on the growing child. In today’s sedentary society many children have inactive childhoods. Gill looks at the effects of this and talks about movement from the emergence of primitive reflexes to the development of fundamental movement skills and why this is so crucial for children’s growth and development, both physical and cognitive.

Hon Heather Roy MP

Heather Roy entered Parliament as an ACT List MP in July 2002 and is currently ACT’s Deputy Leader and Party Whip. Heather is Minister of Consumer Affairs, Associate Minister of Defence and Associate Minister of Education.

Heather is a former physiotherapist who worked in the public health systems in New Zealand and the UK. On returning to New Zealand, Heather coordinated medical research trials for pharmaceutical firms over a ten year period in cardiology and psychiatry. She has also worked as a manager of a private kindergarten and as publicity officer for the New Zealand Portrait Gallery.

Heather’s early Parliamentary focus was on health, national security and social services. This included sitting on both the Health and Social Services Select Committees.

In 2006, Heather joined the Territorial Force of the New Zealand Army as a Field Engineer in the 5th (Wellington, West Coast & Taranaki [5WWCT]) Battalion Group. Since completing basic and specialised training, Heather has continued to attend Army courses until her portfolio duties made this no longer possible.

Heather lives in Wellington with her husband and five children.

Allison Mooney

An international speaker of vast experience, Allison has inspired high profile companies such as Air New Zealand, Pharmac, Fonterra, Ministry of Justice, Commerce Commission, AMP, NZI, ANZ Bank, Drake International, Toyota, L’Oreal Professional, Harcourts, Works Infrastructure and Tourism NZ, just to name a few.

Regardless of what organisation we are in, the common thread is that we all deal with people. Business transformation occurs when we understand, respect and celebrate each others’ differences. By understanding what motivates us, we find greater significance in who we are, and value in what we do, resulting in greater productivity.

Her presentation style makes for a fun and entertaining programme, and more importantly, the uncomplicated content generates greater retention and application.

She will show you how to use the critical keys of influence effectively:

• Work out what makes people tick
• Speed read others to find out what they really want
• See things as they see them (in their shoes)
• Communicate in a way that makes people want to listen
• Know what makes people love coming to work

Her 'call to action' challenges any audience to significantly increase their own performance capability, while constantly improving the quality of their lives, and the lives of those they come in contact with.

Allison is the winner of some very impressive and prestigious awards through the National Speakers Association of New Zealand:
Most Inspirational Speaker of the Year 2007
Most Entertaining & Humorous Speaker 2006
Speaker of the Year 2004/5
Allison is also the author of the book ‘PRESSING THE RIGHT BUTTONS’ – People skills for Business success.

Louise Porter, PhD, MA(Hons), MGiftedEd, DipEd, BA, BIntStuds

Dr Louise Porter is a Brisbane-based child psychologist with over 25 years’ experience in private practice consulting with parents and practitioners about children’s developmental and social or emotional challenges. She worked for 10 years in disability and mainstream settings and then lectured at university in Adelaide for 13 years in topics relating to early childhood, special and gifted education, and behaviour management. She has a particular interest in how adults can guide children’s behaviour, which was the subject of her doctorate. She has published widely, with her books on children’s behaviour being: Children are people too, Young children’s behaviour, a parenting course, A guidance approach to discipline, and a DVD Guiding children’s behaviour. (See www.louiseporter.com.au)

Keynote Address: Our beliefs about children
In this keynote address, Louise Porter will question the ageism inherent in many of our beliefs about children, such as that they are ‘attention seeking’. When we distrust children's basic natures, think of children as incompetent and care more for their future than for their present needs, we are more likely to do things to children, rather than with them when their behaviour is inconsiderate. The session will examine how our beliefs about children influence our practice.

Professor Matt Sanders

Matthew Sanders is a Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of the Parenting and Family Support Centre at the University of Queensland. He is considered a world leader in the field of evidence-based parenting and family interventions. As the founder of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program, his work has had a major international impact on research, policy and practice. Triple P was the first evidence-based public health model of parenting intervention to be experimentally tested and has now been to 18 countries worldwide and has over 35,000 professionals trained to use the intervention. Professor Sanders is known for conducting a large number of high quality randomised trials of parenting interventions many of which have been published in top peer reviewed journals. This work has been widely recognised by his peers as reflected by received number prestigious awards. In 2007, Professor Sanders received the Australian Psychological Society’s President’s Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychology. In 2004 he received an International Collaborative Prevention Science award from the Society for Prevention Research in the US. In 2007 he received a Trailblazers Award from the Parenting and Families Special Interest Group in the Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapy. In 2008 was became a fellow of the New Zealand Psychological Society and has won a Distinguished Career Award from the Australian Association for Cognitive Behaviour therapy. In 2009 was the Honorary President of the Canadian Psychological Association. Professor Sanders has also served as a consultant to WHO on parent education, various state and federal governments in Australia, NZ, Canada and the United Kingdom. He is an Australian Psychological Society spokesperson on child and family matters and he actively promotes positive parenting strategies throughout his local community.

Keynote Address:Taking evidence based parenting programs community wide
Evidence-based parenting programmes have been delivered in two main contexts - Group and individual programs that target vulnerable or high risk families and programmes that seeking to normalise parenthood preparation by targeting all parents. Although a recent international interest in the increased provision of evidence-based parenting programmes in the early years is evident, and should be seen as a positive move, the approach that only targets the parents of the most difficult to manage children has the potential to backfire because of potential stigma that may become associated with participation in such programmes.

An alternative whole-of-community approach is advocated to ensure that a range of quality, culturally appropriate evidence-based parenting programmes are available for parents of children from all age groups from infancy through to adolescence. Such an approach is feasible, cost effective and more likely to benefit a far wider range of parents and at the same time reduce the prevalence rates of serious behaviour, emotional and health-related problems in children. Learnings from large-scale rollouts of such a multilevel approach are discussed and its relevance to the New Zealand context explored.