Impact-Driven Professionals Called To Show Up For The Future At 2021 Festival For The Future And The Impact Awards

As Inspiring Stories celebrates its 10th birthday, the charity has made its first speaker announcement for Festival for the Future and has opened nominations for the 2021 Impact Awards, which will take place this July 31st to August 1st.

The three-day festival is New Zealand’s largest leadership and social innovation summit and is touted as the ultimate professional and personal development event for emerging leaders. After going virtual and streaming to an international audience in 2020, it will once again be held at Wellington’s TSB Arena.

Speakers include Ethique Founder Brianne West, Young New Zealander of the Year Jazz Thornton, Banqer Founder and Impact Award Winner Kendall Flutey, and Sam Stubbs, Founder of Simplicity.

The weekend will also include learning labs, panels, and the 2021 Impact Awards ceremony on Saturday night. Satellite events will take place across Wellington in the lead-up and the festival will feature The Well, the Southern Hemisphere's first Mental Health pop-up Gym.

2015 Young New Zealander of the Year, Edmund Hillary Fellow and Inspiring Stories Founder Guy Ryan says Festival for the Future 2021 is an opportunity to reflect on the past while facing the critical needs of the future.

“We’ve built one of the most innovative and impactful organisations at the intersection of entrepreneurship, leadership, youth and community development. This momentum will snowball into the next decade – the decade of action – as defined by the UN.”

Other inspiring voices in the lineup include 2020 Impact Award Winner and anti-conversion therapy activist Shaneel Lal, Arizona Leger - G(irls) 20 Indigenous Delegate to the 2019 G20 Summit and indigenous fine-art photographer Taaniko Nordstrom, Founder of Soldiers Road. They will be joined by Bill Kermode, Chair of the NEXT Foundation and journalist Miriama Kamo. International speakers will be announced next month.

“To have a platform like Festival and the Impact Awards that encourages Aotearoa’s emerging impact leaders to keep showing up for the future is crucial to supporting impact flow and ensuring as many Kiwis as possible continue on their impact journey,” says Flutey, Enterprise Impact Award Winner 2020.

Current confirmed partners include XERO, Wellington City Council, Ministry for the Environment, TourismNZ and the United Nations Development Programme.

10 Years of Impact

Over the last decade, Festival for the Future, the Impact Awards and Future Leaders programme have touched 10,000 programme alumni and directly reached 50,000 people in public speaking audiences. In 2020 the virtual event included more than 50 speakers and was attended by people in 57 countries.

Impact Awards

In its third year running, The Impact Awards celebrates remarkable young New Zealanders making a difference for our future with $30,000 in prizes across six categories:

Climate

Enterprise

Global

Local

Inclusion

Wellbeing

Nominations and applications are open until Sunday 31 May for the Impact Awards at www.theimpactawards.nz.

Earlybird tickets for Festival for the Future are available for individuals, teams or organisations at festivalforthefuture.co. Scholarships are also available.

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