Tech minds: Discovering your purpose and creating diverse teams to succeed

Join us to hear from 2 Wāhine toa of the tech industry, Diana Minnée (COO and co-founder of Astronort) and Norie Ape (Enterprise Applications Lead at SolarZero).

• Gain practical strategies for intentional living and leadership.
• Learn how to build and leverage cognitively diverse teams.
• Network with professionals who share your interests and challenges.

Diana Minnée: Life on Purpose
Explore the concept of living ‘Life on Purpose’, Diana will share her insights on how to move forward in your career and personal life with intent, determination, and sound reasoning. Learn from her personal journey and discover how she has applied this philosophy in her role as COO and in building her new startup, Astronort. This talk will provide practical advice on how to achieve success by doing things ‘on purpose’ rather than waiting to ‘find your purpose.’

About Diana: Diana is driven by the relentless pursuit of optimisation and balance, and has been looking for ways to scale what she does as a Chief Operating Officer for many years now. She has worked in startups and larger tech organisations such as Arcanum AI, Tapi, JRNY, Common Ledger, Silverstripe and Trade Me since 2010. She moved to Fractional COO’ing in 2019, as one way of bringing value to many, but always wanted more! Diana’s brain is now embedded in Ask Astro, her new AI-driven strategic performance tool from her own startup, Astronort, to help other businesses at even greater scale.

Norie Ape: Building Cognitively Diverse Teams
Our second speaker will discuss the importance of cognitive diversity in tackling complex problems. She will share her experiences in building high-performing teams, addressing technology talent challenges, and navigating AI design and governance considerations. Gain valuable insights into how diverse thinking can drive innovation and improve team performance.

About Norie: Norie Ape is a Samoan-born, Auckland-based Technology Explainerer at SolarZero, where she currently serves as the Enterprise Applications Lead. She is an experienced Digital Transformation Leader who utilizes design thinking, data storytelling, and cognitively diverse teams to enable positive digital experiences.
Outside of her role at SolarZero, Norie is a passionate advocate for diversifying the technology talent pipeline in Aotearoa, with a particular focus on increasing the number of Māori and Pasifika wāhine in technology. In Aotearoa, women make up 23% of the tech sector, with only 4% being Māori and 2.8% Pasifika.
With experience in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors, Norie focuses on ‘using tech for good’ and raising awareness about digital equity challenges in Aotearoa. She actively connects with other wāhine in tech across Aotearoa and the Pacific to celebrate, collaborate, and address key issues and challenges.

This event has been kindly sponsored and hosted by Catalyst IT.
This Meetup is being hosted in person only. Please do not attend if you are feeling unwell or experiencing covid-19 symptoms.

Agenda:
5:30pm - Event start
5:40pm - Diana Minnée: Life on Purpose
6:00pm - Norie Ape: Building Cognitively Diverse Teams
6:20pm - Q&A
6:30pm - Networking
7:00pm - Event closes