Tim Alpe - Jucy

The man who aims to turn Jucy into an international travel brand, Jucy CEO, Tim Alpe is well on his way to building one of Australasia’s fastest growing independent tourism companies.

Tim was recently named the 2010 New Zealand Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. He is a director of JUCY Group Limited, Cruize Milford Limited and Cityhop Limited.

Since JUCY’s 2001 launch, JUCY’s vehicle fleet has grown to 2,500 cars and campavans, rental branches in eight locations around New Zealand and Australia, a JUCY Hotel in Auckland, JUCY Cruize Milford Sound and JUCY By Design, a campervan manufacturing company just north of Auckland. The next plan is to launch more hotels and look at other tourist attractions that can be ‘JUCYfied.’

Tim believes his love for JUCY is the reason for his success and continued motivation. “I love that we have created something from scratch that now has over 160 staff and is used by over 150,000 people each year. I still get excited each time I see one of our cars or campervans on the road, or when I see people’s eyes light up when they walk into the JUCY Hotel.”

Rod Oram

Rod Oram has more than 30 years’ experience as an international business journalist. He has worked for various publications in Europe and North America, including the Financial Times of London.

Rod and his family emigrated from the UK to New Zealand in 1997.

He is currently a columnist for the Sunday Star-Times; a regular broadcaster on radio and television; and a frequent public speaker on business, economics, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, in both NZ and global contexts.

For more than a decade, Rod has been helping fast-growing New Zealand companies through his involvement with The ICEHOUSE, the entrepreneurship centre at the University of Auckland’s Business School.

Penguin published in 2007 his book on the New Zealand economy, Reinventing Paradise.

He was named the Landcorp Agricultural Communicator of the Year for 2009.

Last year, Rod was the winner in the individual category in the 2010 Vero Excellence in Business Support Awards and was Columnist of the Year in the consumer category in the national magazine awards for his columns in Good, a consumer sustainability magazine.

James Lockhart

James was appointed Director of the Graduate School of Business, Massey University in August 2005 and subsequently to the role of Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor (Executive Education). In that capacity Massey University delivered high-end programmes into organisations including Fonterra, COMU (the Crown Ownership Monitoring Unit), ANZ/National Bank of New Zealand, Horticulture New Zealand, and BusinessNZ. James is now the College’s Executive Education Consultant, and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management teaching and researching in strategy and governance.

James has extensive business consulting and executive business development experience in both New Zealand and abroad. He has taught strategy and governance on the MBA and DBA. He has published on doctoral education, strategy, governance, corporate failures, and assessing strategic performance and presented research papers on governance in Canada, Australia, United States of America, Great Britain, Poland, France, and New Zealand. In addition to his academic and business achievements James served for thirteen years as a Territorial Force Officer in the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment. In that capacity he travelled to South East Asia and Australia, attended Staff College at Fort Frontenac, Ontario, and was a senior instructor at the New Zealand Army’s Staff and Tactical School, Waiouru.

He has been the convenor judge of the Wanganui, Manawatu and Rangitikei business award programmes, from which judging methodologies have been adopted elsewhere. James has held several professional directorships (TH Enterprises, Greenlea Group, Henergy Cage-Free, Heritage Farms, Sirdar Global Group & Vision Manawatu).

James farms with his family north of Feilding.

John & Kelly Nicholls

John and his wife Kelly currently own 5 irrigated dairy units producing just over 1.5 million kgs of milk solids with two properties in the Wairarapa and three in mid Canterbury.

John has an Agricultural Degree and a post-graduate Diploma in Agricultural Science from Massey University and has completed the Rabobank Executive Development Programme for Primary Producers in Australia, and with Kelly won the Farmer of the Year in 2001 for the Lower North Island.

Kelly is also a shareholder and Director of Eureka Clothing, an Urban Adventure Wear Destruction Tested Brand (NZ designed) for boys and girls. This has been a huge challenge for Kelly and her fellow directors but is now a NZ owned sustainable business filling a gap in the market by way of web sales and two retail stores.

John has been on the Fonterra Shareholders Council which has given him an enormous understanding of Governance and the importance of Business Strategy. This year he became a Director on the Mayfield Hinds Irrigation scheme in Mid Canterbury.

Deane Purdue

Deane has been a member of the Australian Society of Accountants since 1969 and the New Zealand Institute of Accountants since 1973. He was partner, managing partner and chairman of McCullochs (now BDO Gisborne) from 1978 - 2007. He was also chairman of KPMG Business Advisory. Deane formed his own company (Q & A Business Limited) in October, 2007.

Deane is a sought after business educator. He is also an independent consultant specialising in Future Proofing, Exit, Succession and Protection Planning, having clients throughout New Zealand.

Deane presents workshops and webinars for the New Zealand Institute of Accountants. He is a faculty member of BNZ Partners Growth Programme (since 2001) and is the author of their books and workshops:

• Future Proofing Businesses through Exiting, Succession and Protection Planning.
• Profiting by Understanding & Utilising Financial Statements.
• Trusts/Estates & Legal Structures.

Deane has been married to Dianne for 45 years; they have four married children and 9 grandchildren. He has over the years run 50 marathons, and is now a keen walker and reader.

Ben Allomes

Ben and Nicky Allomes have worked hard on their dairy business. They started with $5000 and a dream of having $1 million dollars within a 10 year timeframe. They are currently 50% equity partners in an 800 cow farm, 50/50 sharemilkers on two farms, and parents’ to four children. Ben is a former president of Young Farmers, and with wife Nicky won the sharemilker of the year in 2008.

Ben will talk about business growth, values and philosophies from his perspective, the importance of setting goals, participating in the industry and the decisions that have seen Ben and Nicky grow their business into what it is today.

Dai Henwood

Dai Henwood 's dream has always been to make people laugh; thanks to his energy and quirky humour, the award-winning comedian has been living the dream for the past ten years.

Dai 's comic characters and hilarious observations on life have seen him become one of the country's most popular and in demand comedians. He's toured to sell-out live shows around New Zealand, and performed at prestigious offshore festivals such as Canada 's famed Just For Laughs in Montreal, the Edinburgh Fringe and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

A man of many talents, Dai is as comfortable donning a pair of tights and star-spangled shorts as comic character wrestler P Funk Chainsaw as he is baking apple and blackberry cobbler to raise money for the Red Cross at a celebrity lunch.

Adrian Foster

Head of Financial Markets Research, Asia-Pacific, Rabobank International

Based in Hong Kong, Dr. Foster analyzes major developments in the Asia-Pacific region.

Dr. Foster has 15 years of experience working as an economist and strategist in the public and financial sectors. Before joining Rabobank, Dr. Foster was an Economics Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney.

Prior to that, Dr. Foster worked at Dresdner Kleinwort as an FX strategist, working full-time in their Singapore, London and Beijing offices at different times since 2003. This included a period as Global Head of G10 FX Strategy.

Dr. Foster has also worked at Nomura Securities, ANZ Bank and Lloyds Bank as senior economist with a major focus on Asian financial markets. He started his career at the Australian government’s Treasury Department.

Dr. Foster holds a PhD in Economics from the University of New South Wales. The dissertation topic of his PhD program considered the merits of various regions around the world sharing a common currency. He holds a Bachelor of Economics degree with First Class Honours from the University of Queensland. Dr. Foster has completed certificated studies in Mandarin Chinese at Fudan University, Shanghai, P.R.C.

Dave Gougé

Dave Gougé is Head of Marketing at Weta Digital, one of the world’s premier visual effects studios based in Wellington, best known for its Oscar-winning work on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong and Avatar. He leads integrated global PR and marketing efforts that extend Weta Digital’s reputation for creativity and innovative technology.

Dave’s expertise is go-to-market strategy within the technology and entertainment markets. At Autodesk he built the brand strategy for the entertainment market overseeing a portfolio of over 20 brands and was responsible for a number of successful programs that helped establish their leadership profile in both the Games and Film industries. Dave has also consulted for a number of companies with promising technology and entertainment offerings including those in the Mobile and App market space.

Paul Brislen

Paul Brislen stepped into the role of chief executive of the Telecommunications Users’ Association of NZ in early 2011. Since then he’s battled mobile termination rates, the threat of a 10-year regulatory holiday under UFB, international mobile roaming rates and copyright legislation whilst keeping a watching brief on the UFB and RBI rollout, spectrum auctions, content debates and the ultimate aim - a faster, smarter, more connected New Zealand. A journalist by trade, past roles include head of corporate communications at Vodafone NZ as well as the editorial spot at ComputerworldNZ. A regular radio and TV technology and telecommunications commentator Paul is known for his brickbats and bouquets approach to keeping the telco industry honest, his trademark Converse boots and Doctor Who fixation.