Location: London
Date: Thursday, 06 February 2025
Panellists: Kaivai Andrews, Catherine Nesus, Lazarus Poutama
Facilitator: Claire Nesus
Kaupapa
This kōrero explored how Māori and Pasifika professionals navigate leadership and cultural identity in global workplaces. Held on Waitangi Day 2025, it created space to share lived experiences of holding dual identities and carrying culture into professional environments beyond Aotearoa.
Rather than offering prescriptive views on leadership, the kōrero centred personal reflection, how values are maintained, adapted, and expressed in spaces that are not always designed with Indigenous worldviews in mind.
These reflections contribute to the wider Voices & Voyages kaupapa of uplifting culturally grounded leadership and visibility for Māori and Pasifika professionals navigating global spaces.
Discussion Highlights / Key Themes
Bringing your whole self to work
Code-switching and cultural intelligence
Leadership beyond titles and hierarchy
Why This Kōrero Matters
For Māori and Pasifika professionals working globally, leadership is shaped by more than role or title. It is influenced by cultural grounding, lived experience, and the ability to move between worlds.
By centring Māori and Pasifika voices on Waitangi Day, this kōrero reframed dual identity as a leadership strength rather than a challenge, highlighting how cultural intelligence and values-led leadership support adaptability, resilience, and impact in global workplaces.
What the Contributors Wrote About
In their essays, contributors reflected on how navigating dual identities has shaped their leadership over time. They explored adaptation and code-switching as conscious skills, cultural grounding as a guide for decision-making, and leadership as something expressed through behaviour rather than title. Across the reflections, cultural identity was framed as a source of clarity, resilience, and strength in global professional spaces. Read their essays here.
Continue the Conversation
This kōrero forms part of Voices & Voyages’ ongoing work to connect, profile, and amplify Māori and Pasifika talent across global spaces.
More kōrero and upcoming events can be found under Connect.