Keynote Speakers

Mr Li Cunxin
"Mao's Last Dancer"

Li was born into poverty in Mao's communist China. At the age of 11 he was selected to train in Madame Mao's Beijing Dance Academy.

Li's astounding drive and relentless hard work made him on of the first cultural scholarships to go to America, and subsequently was offered a soloist contract with the Houston Ballet. Two years later, Li defected to the West and went on to become one of the best dancers in the world. In 1995, Li and his family moved to Australia where he danced his last three and half years as a principal dancer with the Australian Ballet.

For the final two years of his dancing, Li studied finance at the Australian Securities Institute with a view of becoming a stockbroker.

Li's story is captured in his international bestselling autobiography, Mao's Last Dancer, which has been made into a feature film.

Today Li is a senior manager at one of Australia's largest stockbroking firms.

Dr John McCarthy

Director, International Centre for Career Development and Public Policy. The Centre is a joint initiative of the OECD, World Bank and European Commission supported by the education ministries, guidance delivery agencies and practitioner associations of several countries from three continents. Its aim is to promote the policy relevance of career guidance in the fields of education, training, employment and social inclusion internationally. See www.iccdpp.org.

Prior to his present post, Dr McCarthy has held the posts of Project Manager at CEDEFOP, Policy Developer at the European Commission's Directorate General for Education and Culture, and Director of the National Centre for Guidance in Education in Ireland, an agency of the Department of Education and Science. He has worked as an international consultant for OECD and ETF, a university trainer of guidance practitioners, a researcher, and guidance practitioner. He initiated and co-edited Career Guidance: a Handbook for Policy Makers, a joint EC-OECD (2004) publication, and co-authored Establishing and Developing National Lifelong Guidance Policy Forums (CEDEFOP, 2008) and Improving Lifelong Guidance Policies and Systems (CEDEFOP, 2005).

Professor Sir Paul Callaghan
"Wool to Weta: Transforming New Zealand's Culture and Economy"

Professor Sir Paul Callaghan is the Chairman of the International Advisory Board for The MacDiarmid Institute and Professor of Physical Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. According to Dr Paul Callaghan, New Zealand will never prosper if we keep relying on our natural resources alone. Why has our per capita income relentlessly slipped behind other countries? Why do we work harder for less than the rest of the developed world? How can new technologies help us to boost our economy and what is the role of our youth in all this?

Rod Oram

Rod Oram has more than 30 years' experience as an international business journalist. He has worked for various publications in Europe and North America, including the Financial Times of London.

Rod and his family emigrated from the UK to New Zealand in 1997.

He is currently a columnist for the Sunday Star-Times and Good Magazine; a regular broadcaster on radio and television; and a frequent public speaker on business, economics, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, in both NZ and global contexts.

Penguin published in 2007 his book on the New Zealand economy, Reinventing Paradise.

He was named the Landcorp Agricultural Communicator of the Year for 2009.

And in this Year's Vero Excellence in Business Support Awards, Rod is a finalist in the individual category. The winner will be announced on May 20.

Dr Stuart Middleton

Dr Stuart Middleton has worked in a variety of roles in both secondary schools and tertiary institutions. He took up his present position as Director, External Relations at Manukau Institute of Technology in 2002. He has responsibility for managing the institute's external relations, for Maori and Pasifika Development and for projects that address issues of the interface between secondary and tertiary education.

Stuart Middleton has been awarded a Commonwealth Relations Trust Fellowship to the University of London. He has won several QANTAS Media Awards as New Zealand’s best social issues columnist for his writing in a weekly column in NZ Education Review.

In 2007-2008 he won a Fulbright New Century Scholars Award and joined an international group of scholars studying equity and access in higher education. During this period as a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for studies in Higher Education, University of California: Berkeley, he developed proposals for New Zealand's first Tertiary High School which opened at Manukau Institute of Technology in February 2010.

 
Information about further keynote speakers will be added as they confirm.