Bruce grew up the son of a commercial cray fisherman and so did many seasons over the years as a deckhand. He graduated from Otago University, School of Physical Education, but discovered the world of the performing arts & spent 8 years as a professional contemporary dancer in Australia & NZ including dancing with the NZ Ballet (pre their ‘Royal’ tag) & Limbs Dance Co. Bruce has been a professional actor for close to 35 years, won a couple of awards, played the title role of MacBeth on stage and almost single handedly won the battle for middle earth as Gamling, commander of the armies of Rohan, in two of the Lord of the Rings film trilogies. He has been an MC for over 20 years, founded the unique Temp HR agency Action Actors, has 3 adult progeny and 3 wicked mokopuna. If you need any more info, as Mae West said, “come & see me sometime”. He’s thrilled to be back for the CETANZ conference as your MC.

Dr Ihirangi Heke, of Waikato-Tainui descent, was raised in the South Island mountain adventure environment of Queenstown, before it was popularly known as such. Over the past 10 years he has been active in helping Māori and other indigenous groups abroad, build their own health and wellness activities based on their traditional environmental knowledge using mountain biking, waka ama and ski/snowboard. Dr Heke was recently awarded a research grant to compare Systems Science and Whakapapa (Maori Genealogical Connections) by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and retains an Honorary Research Fellow position to the University of Auckland’s Department of Biostatistics.