Professor Chellie Spiller

Chellie Spiller (hapū: Ngai Tahu Matawhaiti Iwitea, iwi: Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairoa) is a Professor at the University of Waikato's Management School. She is a committed advocate for Māori leadership, management, governance and business development. Her PhD developed the notion of relational wellbeing and wealth across spiritual, environmental, social, cultural and economic dimensions at work and she continues to research and publish in this area. Chellie is leading a transdisciplinary team of Māori economy researchers exploring Māori economies of wellbeing, with a strong whānau focus.  This research is part of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, New Zealand's Māori Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE). Chellie is also a member of the Research Advisory Group for the Coastal People: Southern Skies Centre of Research Excellence which connects communities with world-leading, cross-discipline research to support transformative change to rebuild coastal ecosystems.

Chellie has over thirty years of corporate experience in tourism and marketing in New Zealand and abroad, holding senior executive positions. Chellie is a 2022 Leader-in-Residence, Atlantic Institute, Oxford University and a Fellow, International Leadership Association. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Arizona, a recipient of a Research Excellence Award, Dame Mira Szászy Māori Alumni Award, National Māori and Academic Excellence Award.

Her latest book, Practical Wisdom, Leadership and Culture: Indigenous, Asian and Middle-Eastern Perspectives, is co-edited with Ali Intezari and Shih-Ying Yang. The stories from contributors from the world’s wisdom traditions are illuminating and inspiring. Chellie is a co-author of a book on traditional Polynesian navigation, Wayfinding Leadership: Groundbreaking Wisdom for Developing Leaders (2015), with Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr and John Panoho. Wayfinding Leadership is a popular book for Huia Publishing and was shortlisted for the Māori Book of the Year awards, 2016. Wayfinding Leadership is included in the list of 150 books by leading Māori authors assembled by the Royal Society of New Zealand to celebrate 150 years of Māori non-fiction publications. In 2013 Chellie’s co-edited book with Donna Ladkin, Reflections on Authentic Leadership: Concepts, Coalescences and Clashes (Edward Elgar Press) was short-listed for an international leadership book award.

For more information see Professor Spiller's University of Waikato webpage