ECE Leaders Summit - Auckland 16th October 2026 - 11 Seats Left
in-person event

The ECE Leaders Summit

Friday 16th October 2026 | The Sorrento, Auckland
9:00am – 5:00pm, includes morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea
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Not a conference. Not a workshop. A summit, where ECE's leaders come together as peers to think bigger and lead better.
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One day. Five pillars every ECE leader needs: energy to lead, acceleration to grow, clarity to profit, safeguards to protect, and foresight to stay ahead.

ECE Leaders Summit

Not a conference. Not a workshop. A summit, where ECE's leaders come together as peers to think bigger and lead better.
9:00am – 5:00pm, includes morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea

Refocus and refresh your planning practices, moving beyond compliance and rediscovering the joy of documentation.
Contact us if you need to pay via bank deposit. 
*Tickets are limited to 140 seats.
No reservations are complete until payment is made. 

Jenny-May
Clarkson 

Katie
Phillipps

Linda
Harley

Kenina
Court

Paula
Hawkings

James
Ting-Edwards 

Sue
Kurtovich

Leading from the Front

Jenny-May Clarkson

Life has a way of asking something of us. Sometimes it's a new opportunity. Sometimes it's something we never saw coming. Either way, it can leave us wondering if we're ready.

Drawing on lessons from elite sport, policing, broadcasting, business and her own journey of reconnecting with her culture and identity, Jenny-May shares a simple idea: when life changes, we don't need to become someone new—we need to remember who we already are.

As leaders in Early Childhood Education, you're constantly supporting others—your teams, your tamariki and their whānau. But to lead others well, we also need to know how to steady ourselves.

This keynote introduces the RESET philosophy, a practical way to navigate change, reconnect with what matters most and step into what's next with confidence.
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Katie Phillipps

Founder | Investor | Advisor | Confidante
Katie Phillipps scaled Provincial Education Group from a single centre in 2013 to 75 early childhood centres nationwide, before exiting to international operator Busy Bees in 2021. She has never spoken publicly about what that journey really took. Until now.

Behind the milestones was a woman who had to dig deep, back herself, and keep going when keeping going felt impossible. Who learned that building something truly great in this sector has nothing to do with luck, and everything to do with having a vision worth fighting for, a team who believes in it alongside you, and the courage to stay the course when things get hard. Because they will get hard. And that, Katie will tell you, is completely normal.

For the first time, Katie is having this conversation in a room full of people, and she is bringing everything. The honesty and the lessons. The belief that ECE leaders are building something that matters far beyond the balance sheet. Every great centre has the potential to change the lives of children and families, and those of the team. That is worth showing up for, every single day.

Katie knows this sector from every angle: operator, investor, developer, advisor, landlord, educator, industry advocate and edtech director. Through Katie & Co she walks alongside ECE leaders who are in the thick of it, just as she once was.
If you have ever wondered whether your dream is worth chasing — be in this room.

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Quality & Compliance — Doing Both at Once

Paula Hawkings

ECE Compliance & Quality Specialist I ECE Consultancy Services
For many ECE leaders, compliance and quality feel like two competing demands pulling in opposite directions — one driven by paperwork and regulation, the other by philosophy and practice. Paula Hawkings has spent her career helping centres prove that's a false choice. Done well, compliance and quality reinforce each other. Done poorly, they undermine everything.

In this session Paula shares the frameworks and practical approaches she has seen work in real services — from small owner-operated centres to multi-centre groups. She addresses the compliance areas that create the most stress (ERO reviews, licensing criteria, assessment and planning), and shows how the best leaders integrate quality practice into the fabric of their daily operations rather than treating compliance as a separate 'add-on' task.
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Preparing for Sale & Buying with Confidence: What Every ECE Owner Needs to Know

Linda Harley

ABC Business — Top Award-Winning Business Broker 2025
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Whether you are thinking about selling your centre, acquiring another, or simply want to understand the true value of what you have built, this session is unmissable.

Linda Harley, recognised as ABC Business's top award-winning broker of 2026, brings unmatched expertise in ECE business transactions. She has guided owners through the most significant commercial decisions of their lives — and she understands the ECE market with a depth that few others can match.
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Viability & Sustainability: How the Top Centres Don't Just Survive — They Thrive

Kenina Court

Accountant — ECE Specialist
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Kenina Court is far more than a bean counter.

As an accountant with deep, specialised expertise in early childhood services, she has seen the financial realities facing ECE owners from every angle — the centres that are quietly haemorrhaging money while looking busy, the ones that are thriving despite a tough funding environment, and everything in between.

She knows which numbers actually matter, which decisions make or break long-term viability, and where owners are making costly errors without realising it.
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Children's Digital Footprint: Are We Ready for What's Coming?

James Ting-Edwards

NZ Privacy Commission
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Australia has already made the call: personal devices, including smart watches, are being banned from ECE services to protect children's privacy. It's a bold move and it raises a question every NZ centre leader needs to be asking right now: are we next?

You'll walk away with:

A clear picture of where NZ currently stands on children's digital privacy and where the pressure points are

What Australia's device ban can tell us about the direction NZ policy may be heading

Practical questions every centre leader should be asking about devices, photos, and data in their own service

The confidence to have this conversation with your team, your board, and your parent community before it becomes a compliance issue

This isn't about fear-mongering, it's about getting ahead of a conversation that's already underway. If you're responsible for the privacy and wellbeing of children in your care, this is 30 minutes you can't afford to miss.


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Leading from the Front

Sue Kurtovich

Health & Safety Compliance Specialist
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Health and safety compliance is non-negotiable in early childhood services — but knowing you need to comply and knowing where you are genuinely at risk are two different things.

Sue Kurtovich is one of New Zealand's most experienced H&S practitioners in the ECE space, and in this session she brings the patterns she sees again and again: the gaps that regulators find, the incidents that lead to licence downgrades and prosecutions, and the areas where well-meaning centres are still falling short.

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Farewelling a Legend: A Tribute to Sue Kurtovich

Angela Bush & Simon Laube

To close our ECE Leaders Summit, we come together for a moment that means more to us than any keynote or workshop — farewelling Sue Kurtovich as she steps into retirement.

For more than 40 years, Sue has been a steady, guiding presence in early childhood education across New Zealand. A specialist in ECE centre administration and management, she brought over 30 years of hands-on sector experience and an unmatched depth of knowledge of our regulatory environment to everything she did. She spent 15 years as a childcare centre owner, manager and administrator, learning the realities of centre life from the ground up — which is exactly why her advice always rang true.

Join us as we celebrate an extraordinary career and say thank you to a woman who has given so much of herself to this sector she loves. Sue, your advocacy, your wisdom, and your friendship will be felt for years to come. New Zealand's early childhood community is better because of you.
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Partnering with The ECE Leaders Summit to support the growth and development of
ECE Owners, Executives and Leaders across New Zealand. 
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