AI for Good - Wellington | 14 May 2026
Our Speakers
Perspectives on AI in Aotearoa. Real experience, honest conversation.
Tracy Morris
Head of Engineering at Trade Me
Tracy Morris is a product-led technology leader with over 25 years of experience delivering digital products and platforms to millions of New Zealanders, currently serving as Head of Engineering at Trade Me. A finalist for the 2024 Diversity Champion of the Year, she is a passionate advocate for systemic change to increase the representation of women in technical leadership. As an organiser of the Wellington AI Engineering Meetup, Tracy actively promotes responsible AI adoption and high-performance governance to ensure diverse voices shape the future of technology.
Jack Shennan
CEO & Co-founder, Shire
Jack Shennan leads the customer functions across Shire, a company on a mission to make sure no one is taken advantage of when they buy a property. Among the first 0.1% of ChatGPT users, the company have been leaders in applied AI since before OpenAI, Anthropic, or Copilot were mainstays of CTO balance sheets. They have AI agent products in property due diligence, construction, and more. 100 year old lighthouse customer Master Electricians partnered with the team to build an AI voice agent that turned +20 minutes of paperwork on every job into a 5 min phone call.
Martin Kay
Founder and Investor
Martin Kay has 30 years experience as an entrepreneur and investor specialising in startups and early stage ventures. Martin has worked and invested in some of New Zealand's most high profile successes such as Trade Me and Xero, as well as founding Adminis. Martin brings energy, unique insights and strategies for execution to startups.
Hayley Horan
CEO, Business Central & Wellington Chamber of Commerce
Hayley Horan is a seasoned executive with a strong background in business, government, and education. She has held senior leadership roles at Microsoft and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), including serving as the New Zealand Trade Commissioner to Singapore. Currently, she is the CEO of Business Central and the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, where she focuses on building connected and resilient regional economies.
Michelle Burke
Principal Advisor, AI Strategy
Michelle Burke is a data and information leader focused on turning strategy into real-world impact. She has led cloud analytics, governance, and award-winning transformation work at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Passionate about people and culture, she brings teams together to make better, data-driven decisions.
Bogdan State
Lecturer, School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington
Bogdan State is a computational social scientist who builds machine-learning infrastructure and applied AI systems. He teaches in VUW's School of Information Management and works part-time as Data Infrastructure Tech Lead at Vibrant Planet. He also runs a consulting practice focused on data-infrastructure modernisation and data-engineering adoption. Previously, he spent seven years in Silicon Valley, mostly at Facebook, delivering large-scale systems in spam detection, business intelligence, data management, and high-stakes analytics. He holds a Stanford PhD in Sociology and an MSc in Computer Science, with 20+ publications and 14 patents.
Megan Salole
Narrative Strategist, Visual Futurist & Co-Founder, ActionStation
Megan Salole works at the intersection of systems change, narrative strategy, and civic imagination, supporting For Purpose CEOs and organisations to align their story, strategy, and theory of change. As co-founder of ActionStation, she helped launch Aotearoa's most powerful tools for digital civic participation, bringing people together across difference to call for social and environmental justice. She is on the core team of Parker for People, an AI tool deepening democratic engagement with complex political issues, and publishes The Hope Dispatch, a newsletter dedicated to hope as a practical force. At this event, she brings her Dare Dreaming practice as a strategic tool for collective imagination, asking what Aotearoa could dare to become in the age of AI.
Venue & logistics partner
Shawn George Mathew
VESA & The ATOM, Victoria University of Wellington
Shawn George Mathew leads the Victoria Entrepreneurship and Startup's Association (VESA) at Victoria University of Wellington and is the event's venue and logistics partner through The ATOM - VUW's entrepreneur hub. VESA brings together students and the wider startup community through events, hackathons, and hands-on workshops, and has been instrumental in making The ATOM available as a home for Wellington's AI community conversations.
Date & Time
Thursday 14 May 2026
Doors 5:15pm - Programme 5:45 - 7:30pm
Venue
The ATOM
Victoria University of Wellington Entrepreneur Hub