2019

Fady Mishriki is a globally-recognised entrepreneur and innovator, most widely known as the founder of wireless charging technology company, PowerbyProxi.

Born the eldest of four children to Coptic Egyptian parents on the Island of Bahrain, Fady’s fascination with electricity started at a young age, when he famously cut through an extension lead with a pair of scissors to try and make the power jump through the air. Fortunately, he lived to tell the tale but it certainly created a drive for him to rid the world of power cables.

Fady immigrated to New Zealand in 1998, and it was then, while completing his final years of schooling, that he met his future PowerbyProxi partner, Kunal Bhargava. Later, while completing his studies at the University of Auckland, he met leading pioneers in wireless power, Prof. John Boys, Prof. Patrick Hu, and others, who infected him further with a passion for the technology.

He founded PowerbyProxi in 2007, with a mission to design and develop safe, high efficiency and high- density wireless power products – and was soon joined by Kunal. Under Fady’s pioneering stewardship the company quickly grew to become a world leader as the largest wireless power firm globally by revenue, and with over 500 patents to its name. In 2017, Apple acquired the company.

Now in the role of Managing Director at Apple’s Auckland Technology Centre, Fady continues to make a significant contribution to current and future technology.
In addition to his work with PowerbyProxi and Apple, Fady has served on the international board of the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) since 2013. WPC is the organisation behind Qi (the equivalent of Bluetooth or Wifi, but for electricity) which enables wireless charging.

Beyond this, Fady’s commitment to foster the next generation of Kiwi innovators and entrepreneurs has seen him maintain an ongoing involvement with a number of initiatives with the University of Auckland – including both the Engineering Dean’s Leadership Program and the Velocity Challenge (Business School) and was recently inducted into the Chancellor’s Circle.

Watch Fady Mishriki accept his award here.

Rachel Taulelei (Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, Ngāti Rārua) is CEO of Kono NZ. Kono is a Māori-owned, top 100 New Zealand food and beverage company employing over 450 staff, farming more than 1000ha of land and sea, and exporting to over 25 countries. Their brands include Tohu, Kono and Aronui wines, Tutū cider, Kono mussels, Kiwa oysters, and Annies fruit bars. Kono also grows apples, pears, kiwifruit and hops, and is involved in sustainable seafood through its business Yellow Brick Road.

Kono is an associated business of Wakatū Incorporation. Based in Nelson, Wakatū has over 4,000 shareholder families who descend from the original Māori land owners of the Nelson, Tasman and Golden Bay regions located within Te Tau Ihu, the top of the South Island.

Founder of sustainable seafood company Yellow Brick Road, Rachel was formerly NZ Trade Commissioner in Los Angeles. She is a fierce advocate of New Zealand’s primary industry and has spent 20 years promoting Aotearoa as a world-class producer of food and beverages.

Rachel has received the Sir Peter Blake Leadership Award and is a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to food and hospitality. In 2018, Rachel was named Māori Woman Business Leader at the prestigious University of Auckland Aotearoa Māori Business Leaders Awards, and she presently sits on the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council.

Her governance experience includes Moana NZ, Wellington Regional Stadium Trust, New Zealand Wine Growers, Aquaculture New Zealand, the Young Enterprise Trust, and Sir Peter Blake Trust.

Watch Rachel Taulelei accept her award here.

Christopher Shaw is a Professor of Neurology and Neurogenetics at King’s College London. His clinical training was conducted in New Zealand and in 1992 he ventured to Cambridge, UK on a Wellcome Trust Fellowship. In 1995 he moved to King’s College London and King’s College Hospital – where he trained in Neurogenetics, and his clinical and research interest became focused on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

Under Christopher’s stewardship, the Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience grew from 10 to 40 Principal Investigators over a 10-year period. He led an initiative to build a new Neuroscience research facility by making the strategic case for colocation, led the design brief and raised the £50m required to build and equip the 10,000sqm Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute. It opened in June 2015, providing exceptional wet laboratory and microscopy facilities. He subsequently led a successful £15m bid to host a United Kingdom Research Institute Centre within the Wohl.

Christopher and his research team have discovered more ALS and FTD genes than any other laboratory, and have created one of the world’s largest Biobanks of post mortem tissues, DNA samples, lymphoblast and induced pluripotent cell lines from patients with ALS and FTD. This has underpinned his research exploring the genetics, molecular and cellular pathobiology of ALS and FTD which has led to the publication of >230 peer reviewed papers, cited >17,500 times generating an H index of 67. They have developed stem cell and transgenic mouse models of disease that have revealed important insights into disease mechanisms and novel drug targets.

TECHNICAL BACKGROUND

His team identified many novel SOD1 mutations and described the associated molecular pathology. They were the first to identify mutations in TDP-43 in familial and sporadic ALS and demonstrate toxicity in vivo. They subsequently identified the mechanisms regulating TDP-43 nucleocytoplasmic shuttling, identified the major RNA binding targets and the pathways regulating its proteolysis. They have generated mutant TDP-43 transgenic mice, patient induced pluripotent stem cells, IPS-derived neurons and glia from TDP-43 mutant patients that recapitulate key features of human ALS pathology.

Using genome-wide linkage they identified a novel locus for familial ALS on chromosome 16q. Subsequently, they identified mutations (FUS) and were the first to demonstrate that FUS mutations disrupt the nuclear localizing signal leading to cytoplasmic aggregation. They generated the first transgenic mouse model demonstrating that FUS overexpression leads to an ALS phenotype with a dying back axonopathy.

They were the first to demonstrate linkage to Chromosome 9p in an ALS and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) kindred subsequently shown by others to be an expanded G4C2 hexanucleotide repeat and the most common mutation for ALS and FTD.

Subsequently, they discovered the hallmark cerebellar pathology in C9-ALS and FTD and the RNA binding proteins that bind to RNA foci. Their exome/genome sequencing is ongoing, with recent discoveries including mutations in TUBA4A, NEK1, Annexin A11 and ARPP21. Their major focus for the future is to develop gene therapies using antisense oligonucleotides and adeno-associated viral gene vectors.

Watch Prof. Christopher Shaw accept his award here.

Kirsten Nevill-Manning is a globally-recognised HR professional, with a long-time passion for recruiting and building successful teams and business leaders around the world.

Throughout her career, Kirsten has been responsible for scaling and growing recruitment operations for some of the world’s most innovative companies.

Between 2008 and 2013, Kirsten was the Director of International Human Resources and Head of Global Recruiting for Facebook – helping to drive their expansion through the opening of the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the European offices (except the UK) and numerous offices in the USA too including Austin, responsible for hiring thousands of employees across the global locations.

Prior to joining Facebook, she spent seven years as part of Google’s People Operations team, including a role as Google’s first Manager of International Staffing, helping to expand the company to new regions across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America, including New Zealand, Poland, Turkey, China, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Kirsten was based initially in Mountain View in 2001, CA and moved to New York City in 2003.

Kirsten is currently the Vice President of People Operations, IT and Facilities at Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) – a New York-based online educational marketplace, connecting a community of over five million educators to share, buy, and sell original educational resources, with over one billion resources downloaded to date.

Teachers Pay Teachers is the world’s first and largest educational marketplace, founded on the belief that when educators get the resources and support they need, they’re best equipped to inspire the next generation of learners. Fast Co just named Teachers Pay Teachers — the site that 2 out of 3 U.S. teachers turn to for teacher-proven content — the #1 Most Innovative Education Company of 2019. To date, more than 1 billion resources have been downloaded by over 5 million educators (including teachers, administrators, and parents).

Kirsten is married to Kiwi computer scientist Craig Nevill-Manning (who, during his 15 year tenure with Google, was responsible for founding the company’s first remote engineering centre, located in New York). Craig is a former recipient of the World Class New Zealand Award.

Together the couple host regular events for New Zealanders in the New York area, and have made significant philanthropic contributions to a variety of organisations – including the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organisation which fights poverty in New York City, and Acumen, which tackles poverty in the developing world by helping to build companies whose products and services enable the poor to transform their lives.

Watch Kirsten Nevill-Manning accept her award here.

Elizabeth Iorns is a globally recognised scientist, innovator and entrepreneur, who is the co-founder, and current CEO & President (and Chairman of the Board) of Silicon Valley start-up Science Exchange.
Science Exchange is a world-leading marketplace for outsourced scientific research and development – connecting scientists with a network of over 2500 qualified scientific research institutions all over the world, including contract research organisations (CROs) and manufacturers (CMOs), academic labs and government facilities.

Elizabeth and Science Exchange co-founder, Dan Knox (Chief Operating Officer) launched the platform in 2011 with the goal of making the impact of scientific discovery readily available to every organisation on the planet.

The platform has since been credited with transforming the global scientific research industry via the creation of greater connectivity and transparency – enhancing the speed of research, and the growth of scientific knowledge by enabling better access to the world’s scientific expertise.

Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from the Institute of Cancer Research (UK) and was an Assistant Professor at University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine where she investigated breast cancer development and progression.

of high unmet medical need) and Perception Therapeutics (an organisation dedicated to developing curative gene therapies for inherited retinal diseases). She is also an Advisory Board Member of Meta- Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS).

Elizabeth has been widely recognised for her achievements – including being named one of Goldman Sachs’ ‘100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs’; finalist for Scrip’s Executive of the Year Award; Kevin Abosch ‘Women in Tech’ portrait series; Nature Magazine’s ‘Ten People Who Mattered’; ELLE’s Women in Tech; and one of WIRED’s ’50 Women Who Are Changing The World’.

She is regularly featured in the media, as well as being invited to speak at thought-leadership events all over the world.

In addition to her various roles at Science Exchange, Elizabeth is also a co-founder of Reformer Therapeutics (an immuno-oncology company launched in 2018 to develop new therapies for cancers.

Watch Dr Elizabeth Iorns accept her award here.

Ric Kayne is the Founder and co-Chairman of Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, a Los Angeles-based manager of alternative investment strategies. The firm, which was founded in 1984, serves a distinguished client list of institutions, endowments, foundations, family offices and high net worth individuals.

Ric is responsible for having grown the firm to become one of the premier alternative asset managers in the United States, specialising in oil and gas, energy infrastructure, credit, specialty real estate, growth private equity and marketable securities.

In addition to co-founding Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, Ric also founded Kayne Anderson Rudnick, a traditional investment management firm – which he grew to over $10 billion in assets under management, before selling it in 2001 to the Phoenix Companies.

Ric and his wife Suzanne’s shared love of New Zealand has seen them make significant (and ongoing) investments in order to establish the country as a world-class golfing destination – including the development of the globally-recognised Tara Iti golf course in Te Arai, north of Auckland. The course, designed by renowned course designer, Tom Doak, was played by President Barack Obama during his visit to New Zealand in 2018.

Ric’s future plans include the development of two further golf courses in the Northland region, near Tara Iti, as well as significant investments in the Queenstown area.

Ric is a trustee of, and the former chairman of, the Investment Committee of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Foundation, and he is a trustee of and former co-chairman of the Investment Committee of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles.

He began his career in the mid-1960s as an analyst with Loeb, Rhodes & Co. in New York and was a principal of Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Inc., where he managed private accounts, a hedge fund and a portion of firm capital.

Watch Ric Kayne accept his award here.