Otago Business School · AI Leadership Residency
Two days, in the room. Cohorts 2 and 3, 2026.
"Artificial intelligence is a leadership, workflow and governance issue before it is a technical one."
AI executive education, designed differently. A two-day in-person residential for senior leaders, capped at 20. Not tools training. We start where the scarce work actually is: where each leader stands on AI, what stays human, where AI leads, and what they are willing to bet on.
"Often content like this for exec education is pitched too low-level. This one was spot on."
Luke Taylor, CEO, SSS
Morning
The landscape and the frontier, to set the horizon for the two days. Professor Kristine Dery (MIT CISR and Macquarie Business School) on what she is seeing across the field, and where it is heading.
How a large organisation manages the people experience of AI change. Professor Kristine Dery introduces One NZ; Rachel facilitates a Chatham House conversation with Sarah Bellett, Head of People Experience at One NZ. Said in the room, stays in the room.
Where the Residency does its real work. Each leader sets their own stance on AI, then the organisational stance alongside it. This is the start of the SBEG spine the Pilot proved: Stance, then Bets, then Execution, then Guardrails.
What stays human when the tools get good. Judgement as disciplined curiosity: the context you bring before the work, the quality you hold during it, the frontier you reach for after. It follows from stance.
Afternoon
Past the demos, to the patterns that actually move how the work happens. Where AI earns its place, and where it does not.
Each leader builds a working tool on the spot, here on this hub. Pick one to take away:
Built live, kept after. You leave with a tool that runs, not notes about one.
AI is a change project, not a technology project. What makes it hold: aim at what matters most, pair your champions with the people who own the work, and check weeks later whether it stuck or quietly reverted.
Aaron Kenny at Dairyworks is building, not just sponsoring: a leader in the work himself, a champion in every function, the people who learn it teaching the next ones. What he did to make AI change hold, and what carries across to your business.
Morning
Leaders from the first cohort come back, across different sectors and vantage points, on how putting change into their businesses is really going. The honest version, not the highlight reel.
Name what will actually stop you: data, governance, people, budget, tech, competing priorities. Each gets a specific action and a name against it. Not "sort out data" but "book the meeting by Friday."
Each leader shapes a real project to carry out of the room. The measure of success is not what was produced in Queenstown, but what is still running three months later.
Each leader pitches their project. The room sharpens it, and commits to it.
Faculty: Rachel McBride and Henry Martin.
Guests: Professor Kristine Dery (MIT CISR · Macquarie Business School), Sarah Bellett (One NZ), Aaron Kenny (Dairyworks), and alumni from Cohort 1.
Book your place in Cohort 2 or 3, or find out more.
Book your place or find out moreThis page is kept current. When the programme changes, it changes here.