 So you're guys stood here before you and introduced myself as an EHF cohort one fellow and look how much younger and more beautiful I look today maybe not it's been a lot of work and a lot of flight hours in fact but I was so inspired then and I still end today to have the opportunity to be here as an investor or mentor and advisor to support government technology and civic technology entrepreneurs here in Aotearoa and my hypothesis then and what I said at the time was that I believe that a country with a nimble coalition governments unlike mine a country that had a deep commitment to and long history of civic engagements and strong educational system was positioned to build solutions in government and civic technology that could be relevant for the world and I said also that I believe there's some unique characteristics here the active engagement in resolving a painful colonial legacy through treaties and reparations with the Iwi and thanks also to Maori Titanga with the imbuing the land with rights that these were the sorts of values that would actually create solutions that would be more competitive in the world and the truth is these ideas are untenable in my country today and in many countries throughout the world and so Aotearoa has a unique role to play in bringing these values and these ideas to the world especially at a time when trust has never been lower and I believe trust is going to be the most valuable currency of the future so over the past year still from my base in Brooklyn where I've hosted many a Kiwi and many an EHF fellow I I've also been listening and learning and working to contribute here in Aotearoa from afar I've spent time with the Department of Internal Affairs the lab plus team they're working on a program called better rules which is essentially turning the legislation into algorithms into code that's programmable so that if we can just agree on the outcome that we want to see and even the most politically polarized interests often agree on what the goal is we can actually say we're gonna leave it to data and a feedback loop to figure out how to get there and that can be transformative in terms of our ability to take the politics out of policy and actually work towards a solution that is data driven that we can agree empirically is right this is an idea is relevant around the world it's already spreading to Australia and I'm socializing it in New York I'm also working with tequila tequila is a company that's working with Iwi across the country to help them quantify and visualize and understand their land so that they can be more enfranchised in public policy debates and management of their resources I'm also working with the gov tech accelerator out of lightning lab down in Wellington as an advisor there are teams there like from the Ministry of Social Development that had built a financial coaching platform and a corollary rewards incentives platform to be able to help tens of thousands of Kiwi save millions of dollars and have better economic health or the team from the Wellington City Council that is built a platform to help homeowners figure out how to put a new dwelling in their backyards promoting healthy urban density resolving the housing crisis and also providing an economic windfall for them this is an idea we need in New York and Portland and all of the other American cities that I spend time in I'm also investing in this ecosystem and an investor in the flux accelerator fund which is working with 10 of New Zealand's most audacious startups at a very early preceded stage I've invested directly in Alana Scott my fellow fellows a little bit yummy Albie as we like to call it is poised to help more than a million people every year better manage their irritable bowel syndrome conditions so that they can lead healthier lives and I hope that in the next year we can bring it to the states in a way that we can actually get our insurance payers to pay for this important service as Oliver mentioned I'm working with him and with Adrian Gerr from cohort one also and looking at how can we activate our network of networks that we have as the F fellows around the world to bring values aligned capital investment at a higher scale to New Zealand and this collaboration is going both ways this collaboration is also coming back to me in New York centrality up in Auckland one of the world's foremost blockchain companies is directly supporting my startup cover us health in New York and more importantly they're building the transportation protocols and identity protocols that simply work better in a low trust world than the ways that we're doing those things in governments in the US right now so I'm introducing those solutions to governments in the US through my network of peers there I've also hired crypto launchpad to work on our crypto economic model for my health economy solution in the States so I'm grateful for the innovation and the ingenuity of Kiwi entrepreneurs not just because I can contribute because I'm actually directly benefiting with my work back in my United States and most of all and finally for today I'm incredibly inspired by my fellow fellow James Mansel's data commons and Z projects in my view this is the most rigorously designed and practical to implement way to actually put trust back in the ways that we share information with each other with between governments between businesses between communities between people the first roll out of it is happening this week and is putting the economy back in the environment I'm going to be taking the same technologies and the same ideas and applying them to my effort to try to put equity and efficiency back in the US health economy because they're directly applicable so to summarize I'm here a year later and I'm a believer more than ever that there is unique opportunity here to build solutions in New Zealand that are disproportionately good for and will can be able to compete well in the world I don't think we're in an era anymore where the size of your GDP matters as much as the degree of resiliency and equity that you can bring in your solutions and I think that that is going to mean that truly the currency of the future is going to be trust and it's in such sort supply so the degree that we have it here which is higher than anywhere that I've ever been is truly differentiating and truly valuable so I'm still a US citizen I still live in New York I'm not a permanent resident but you really are my Fano and I am a bridge and I am so grateful to all the people this land for the opportunity to be here and do this work