Wayfinding Leadership Academy
Immersive, Place-Based Leadership at the Kupe Waka Centre.
Immersive Leadership Retreats
The Wayfinding Leadership Academy offers a unique experience grounded in Indigenous knowledge, cultural practice, and deep connection to place.
Held at Kupe Waka Centre in Northland, these programmes invite participants to slow down, listen deeply, and engage with leadership as a whole-of-being journey. Here, the natural environment — land, sea, stars, and community — becomes the teacher, and the learning is embodied, experiential, and powerfully relational.
Residential stays are available.
Leadership Rooted in Place
At the Academy, leadership is explored on the whenua, under the stars, beside the waka, and around shared kai. Through guided experiences using the star compass, waka navigation, marae-based learning, gardening and harvesting, and storytelling, participants rediscover what it means to lead with presence, purpose, and integrity.
Each programme is shaped by the rhythms of the natural world and the wisdom of mātauranga Māori — delivered with care by experienced facilitators who hold space with cultural depth and professional excellence.
Who It’s For
Leaders seeking to reconnect to purpose
Organisations ready for immersive team development
Individuals drawn to Indigenous approaches to leadership
Emerging facilitators and changemakers
Teams looking for cultural grounding and clarity
School visits and stays are welcome
What You’ll Experience
Connection to celestial navigation and the star compass
Marae-based learning about Wayfinding Leadership
Learning from waka carvers and crew
Sharing kai
Time for stillness, storytelling, reflection, and reconnection
A powerful reconnection to land, self, and others
These experiences are designed to expand leadership consciousness, deepen relational practice, and cultivate inner clarity — all within a setting of cultural and environmental richness.
Want to Learn More?
Our Academy programmes range from short intensives to multi-day residential retreats, and can also be tailored for specific teams or groups.
This is leadership, reimagined.
Rooted in wisdom. Held in relationship. Guided by place.
