Puna Walker (Whakatōhea) is the architect of FranklyAI's Te Reo Māori conversational agent. He is passionate about NLP AI and speech technology particularly in their applications for language revitalisation. His focus is developing AI to allow us to break down barriers to engagement and reach the isolated communities of Aotearoa.

Dave is a Principal Service Network Planner with Auckland Transport. Dave has been at Auckland Transport (and predecessor organisations) for over 26 years in a variety of roles, joining the planning team around nine years ago. Prior to this Dave started his career in public transport as a bus driver in Auckland. Between 2016 and 2019, Auckland has rolled out a New Network for public transport in Auckland, Dave has been heavily involved in this network, including leading the planning for two of these areas. Since 2019 Dave has been involved with continuous refinement and fine-tuning of the network

Helen is a Transport Services Engagement Planner at Auckland Transport. She is passionate about empowering Aucklanders to actively participate in the complex task of planning and developing our transport network. She previously worked in London on school travel planning, Cycle Hire and Legible London projects. In Auckland she has been heavily involved in the implementation of the New Network for public transport and on-demand rideshare services. She holds a BCom (Hons) in Economics.

Shannon has worked on a wide variety of masterplanning, urban design and environmental projects throughout New Zealand. He specialises in evaluating landscape and visual effects, and providing strategic development advice across interdisciplinary teams. Sarah is a Principal Transport Planner within Tauranga City Council's (TCC) Transport Strategy & Planning Outcomes team. She has 14 years’ experience in transportation management; since 2010 in New Zealand and previously in the UK. Sarah has experience in both technical advice and project management roles, transport assessment, strategy and policy development, stakeholder engagement, and travel demand management. Sarah's role covers a wide range of transportation projects, but her passion lies in the sustainable transport space and the interaction between transport and communities, through improving accessibility and cultural connections.

Takeshi is an integrated planner with over 14 years’ experience in strategic transport planning and infrastructure appraisals with a strong focus on land use integration and equity in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Prior to relocating to New Zealand, Takeshi conducted a number of strategic transport planning assessments and evaluations to provide justifications and evidence at Transport for London. Takeshi was born in Japan but has spent most of his life in London, New York, and most recently NZ. Having grown up as a person of colour in Europe, it was only natural for him to become curious about how people interact with each other in society. He naturally chose to study Social Science for his first degree with his dissertation in criminology assessing the social and economic impacts of blue and white collar crimes. To understand how people interact with each other in a given built environment, he studies Urban Planning for his post-graduate studies. To gain technical skills and knowledge of transportation, he has also taken another postgraduate course in transportation planning at New York University. In 2022, to bring the equity perspectives to Urban and Transport planning within the NZ context, Takeshi took an 8 week course in Race, Gender, and Class as a part of African American Study at UC Berkley, which is the principals of Equity Planning.

Corinne is a consultant with both UK and New Zealand experience who is passionate about promoting and facilitating social outcomes and findings ways for these to be incorporated into both new and existing assessment frameworks. She has experience obtaining planning approvals, undertaking consultation on large infrastructure projects, writing social impact assessments and providing policy analysis to a range of public and private clients. She has just completed a masters degree at the University of Cambridge in Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment and is looking forward to putting into practice what she has learnt as an Associate at Beca. She particularly enjoys working collaboratively in a team environment to come up with unique solutions for clients that puts social outcomes at the heart of decision-making.