Invited Speakers

Melanie Mark-Shadbolt (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua, Te Arawa (Ngāti Kearoa Ngāti Tuarā), Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, Ngāti Raukawa (Ngāti Huia), Rangitane (Hurunui-o-Rangi), Ngāti Rārua Ātiawa)  is a Māori environmentalist and the Chief Executive of Te Tira Whakamātaki, a growing network of Māori practitioners working across biosecurity, biodiversity, and emergency management. Her work sits at the frontline of some of Aotearoa NZ’s most pressing environmental challenges, where the stakes are high and the answers are rarely simple.

She brings together science, mātauranga Māori, and community-led action to protect native species, safeguard culturally significant seeds, and strengthen responses to biosecurity threats and climate-driven disasters. Melanie is known for asking uncomfortable questions - like why we continue trying to fix environmental crises with the same systems that created them, and why Indigenous knowledge is still treated as optional when the evidence suggests otherwise. Her work challenges conventional approaches, advocating for Indigenous leadership and system transformation as essential to building resilience, not just for ecosystems, but for the communities connected to them. She believes we are well past the point of small adjustments. What is needed now is a fundamental shift in how we understand our relationship with the natural world, and perhaps a little less certainty from those who think they already have all the answers.

Aimee You Sato is a hula dancer that grew up on Kaua'i, and now lives on Ko'olaupoko on O'ahu. She studied at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, with a focus in traditional ecological knowledge and biocultural restoration of Hawaiian dry forests. Her non-academic training comes from her kumu hula (teachers of the dance of environmental kinship), and she continues to be a lifelong learner of Hawai'i lifeways. Today, Aimee bridges her expertise in biocultural conservation and research as the Stewardship Coordinator for the He'eia National Estuarine Research Reserve, at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology. Her primary work is in the implementation of the Mālama 'Āina Plan, a comprehensive plan that balances the needs to preserve the natural environment and cultural foundations of the island of Moku o Lo'e with the essential functions of a research institute, and serves as a model of stewardship and adaption for a changing climate. 

She has served in the Board of Directors for the Society of Conservation Biology Oceania since 2022, and has provided international leadership in connecting indigenous and Pacific Islander conservationists together through various conferences and groups such as the Voice Across Moananuiākea forum. Aimee is also actively collaborating on cross Pacific projects such as a multi-author book that will feature stories from local and indigenous stewards on how they are approaching conservation and research with futurity in mind. 

As a non-Hawaiian that was born on and fed by these islands, Aimee's life mission is to be a strong advocate of Native Hawaiian values, elevating both the people and places of her home, supporting 'āina-based conservation, and bridging conservation, science, and community to encourage reciprocal and co-devoleped research.