Guest Speaker: Guy Ryan

By Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature | Posted:

Creative Cities Southern Hui warmly welcomes GUY RYAN as delegate and guest speaker. Guy will speaking at Creative Connections on Thursday 30th November.

'Imagine if every young New Zealander unleashed their potential to change the world.'

Guy Ryan is an entrepreneur, leader and speaker. Passionate about creativity and entrepreneurship, he believes that young people are a critical part of the solution to tackling the big issues of our time.

Guy was awarded Young New Zealander of the Year in 2015, and in the same year was invited to speak at the Social Enterprise World Forum alongside Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. He has served on boards and strategic groups advising government and business, and has spoken internationally and at home to more than 25,000 people.

From humble beginnings growing up in one of the most rural parts of New Zealand, Guy has built numerous ventures from scratch, both for-profit and charitable, and is particularly passionate about social enterprise as a means to help solve the complex and urgent challenges our world faces.

As the Founder and Chief Executive of Inspiring Stories, he’s built an impressive track record of programmes and partnerships that have now supported more than 6,000 young New Zealanders to unleash their potential. These include major national events (Festival for the Future), accelerator programmes (Live the Dream), and most recently commercial ventures that have enabled Inspiring Stories to transition from a charity to a social enterprise with its recruitment agency (Millennials) and speaker bureau (Inspiring Speakers) ventures.

Learn more about Inspiring Stories here: https://www.inspiringstories.org.nz/

'Storytelling is powerful. Stories literally shape our attitudes, our behaviour, our identity. Stories define who we are as a nation…Stories alone won’t change the world. We need action.'

Creative Connections aims to explore creativity as the touchstone of healthy, sustainable communities and celebrate the power of collaboration to inspire.