Nuwanthie Samarakone
With a career ranging from being a global business founder, a company director, a political candidate in the New Zealand general election, to a former ballet dancer, Nuwanthie draws on her youth and rich experience of many worlds to bring any room and conversation alive.
She is a keynote speaker, facilitator, MC and commentator on topics that traverse across from high growth business mentality, international and vocational education, future of skills and workforce, Asia business, and politics alongside diversity-related and equity-based issues – she brings this through her unique lens of life, work experience and education.
She stands for values-based impact that creates better lives. She is the founder and director of ICE (Inspire, Create & Engage) whose Kaupapa (purpose) is designing and delivering sustainable, aspirational and supportive career pathways for our rangatahi (youth) through developing internships and graduate schemes for organisations looking to build talent pipelines.
Having built a team around her and scaling the business from Aotearoa over a decade ago to 6 countries covering off 27 markets across Asia Pacific, some of the clients ICE partner with are FTSE 500, Forbes top 100 brands and Government Agencies in the Asia Pacific region. In 2020, she exited as Managing Partner at ICE, to focus on her efforts into governance and being a public voice across a range of platforms.
The company continues to operate and scale successfully, continuing to make an impact. She remains as the Founding Director.
In 2022 she was awarded the inaugural Ethnic Governance Award, endorsed by the Ministry of Ethnic Communities. In 2021 she was a finalist for the Emerging Governance leader award by Governance New Zealand, recognised as a 40 Under 40 business leader by the University of Auckland and recipient of the Emerging company director to make an impact in the Public sector by the Ministry of Ethnic Communities and the Superdiversity Institute Aotearoa.
You will also see Nuwanthie feature frequently as a business commentator on the AM Show Panel TV3, RNZ National, and for Mediaworks on the radio and business Podcasts locally and internationally.
Nuwanthie brings youth, energy, passion and focus to all her engagements.
Nuwanthie calls for us to “hit the refresh button” on what we think about culture, asserting the responsibility has fallen to us to “preserve, build and create” our future through cultural collision.
