Chris is a highly experienced brand marketing strategist, with a 20-something year track record within the design industry, working for several leading consumer and B2B brands.

As a brand strategist and design thinking coach, Chris gives businesses the clarity and confidence to advance by helping them to define their brand strategy, purpose and story and translating that into culture and customer experiences.

With particular strengths in understanding human motivations and market dynamics, Chris helps identify how markets are playing out and where opportunities lie.

After a number of years making waves in the Royal NZ Navy as navigator and captain, Luke changed tack, becoming an award-winning executive and innovative customer experience designer, with proven success leading large organisations through periods of significant growth and transformation.

Passionate about seeing New Zealand businesses develop to their full potential, Luke works specifically in helping teams operationalise innovation – in short: turning ideas into successful commercial reality.

Luke holds a Master’s degree in Strategy and is a current doctoral candidate at the University of Otago researching entrepreneurship, innovation, and growth.

Blythe is a strategic-creative designer passionate about growing New Zealand's future and helping great companies create and scale great ideas. His sector experience is significant, including consumer products, food and beverage, agritech, outdoor apparel and sporting equipment, medical and healthcare, to furniture, textiles and new materials development. 

Working across the broad design domain – integrating design strategy, consumer insight, new product development, user experience, brand, through to the application of technical research, science and technology – has allowed Blythe to develop a broad end-to-end skill set, from research to understanding, insight to idea, prototype to product, and commercialisation through to scale-up.

Gareth has worked in the design industry for over 20 years in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom, building great brand design systems and bringing them to life through engaging print collateral, packaging, digital, environmental and retail design.

A career highlight was the six years Gareth spent as Creative Director, Brand, for apparel company Icebreaker, where he was responsible for the creative strategy, design and delivery of all global assets for wholesale, retail and e-commerce.

Sandwiched between Icebreaker and his Elam Fine Arts degree were stints at Designworks, one of Australasia’s leading design agencies, and Pentland Brands, London developing brands and seasonal campaigns for global outdoor, sports and fashion brands, including Speedo, Ellesse, Kickers, and Berghaus.

Wing is a cross-cultural business consultant with over 20 years’ experience in customer insight research and marketing in China and New Zealand.

A native speaker of Mandarin and Cantonese, and equally fluent in English, Wing’s primary focus is on helping exporters tailor their brand marketing strategies in China, supporting Kiwi organisations seize the opportunities that China presents. With a particular expertise in connecting with the Daigou channel, Wing understands the interplay between official and grey channels in helping brands grow in China.

Wing has lived and worked in both China and New Zealand for extensive periods of time. Her native understanding of the cultural nuances provides invaluable inroads into the often hard-to-reach Asian markets.

Wing holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from China and a postgraduate diploma in Marketing from Massey University. She has been an executive committee member of the Research Association New Zealand for 12 years.