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Hancine Samvelyan

Hancine is an education leader, who strongly believes in the power of lifelong learning, overcoming obstacles to figure out your strengths, and harnessing what you learn for good.

She’s passionate about research relating to leading change, social justice and education – which couldn’t be a more perfect fit for our organisation.

Hancine is the Programme Lead for our Master of Change and Organisational Resilience, and the Postgraduate Certificate in Leading Change for Good. She facilitates the sessions, assists students on their learning journey, works across academic quality and assessment for this programme, bringing in her leadership expertise and passion.

Hancine has a somewhat complicated relationship with learning, finding out she was dyslexic just as she began university. This made a lot of things fall into place for Hancine, it meant she could now create strategies to utilise the way her brain functioned, and it also came with the realisation that nothing would be conventional or easy for her.

However, she didn't for one second let it stop her learning. Hancine's achievements include a Master of Educational Leadership a BA in Screen and Media & Computer Science, academyEX's Postgraduate Certificate in Digital & Collaborative Learning, a Diploma in Teaching and Learning from Canterbury, a paper on Leadership and Social Justice, and the Organisational Agility Micro-credential from Tech Futures Lab. An incredible list for someone who has faced the ongoing challenge of a learning barrier!

Hancine’s ability to connect with learners and guide them along their journey comes from a combination of this diverse pool of learning, as well as the other projects and roles she’s taken on along the way. She’s worked with Next Foundation and Ngā Pūmanawa e Waru, a project that delivered future-focused learning to 40 schools in Rotorua, and for the last few years helped to deliver the Master of Teaching and Education Leadership (previously run by the The Mind Lab). She is also continuing to discover her own whakapapa, something she believes is important to share with her two children; Nikita and Jivan.

Hancine is passionate about enabling schools and leadership teams to move to a more technology-integrated approach, particularly the changes to behaviour and strategy that come with this move. She has brought her experience in change, and her knowledge of the vital position leadership has in change, into her role as Programme Lead for the Master of Change and Organisational Resilience, and Leading Change for Good Postgraduate Certificate.

"If we truly want change then we have to be challenged and be comfortable being uncomfortable. We need leaders who are prepared to listen, prepared to be inclusive, prepared to take risks as well as being open to new ways of thinking and doing.”

Hancine believes that critical thinking is the pathway forward and that diversity of mind, body and soul is the norm, and how we will continue to grow innovation and curiosity. She’d love to meet and learn from Maya Angelou, and her super power is without a doubt “sense making” – taking complex ideas and helping people understand them in her humble and human approach.