Meet our team: Daniel Adams

“For me, the desired outcome is for a learner to have a successful journey, and one in which they feel seen and experience tangible benefit from their time with us,” he says.

A newly created role last year, Dan describes his job as a programme manager as “crafting learning experiences for ākonga”.

“It’s about alignment. A programme manager has the responsibility and the opportunity to shape learning to better align what we're offering with the needs and goals of our stakeholders and ākonga.”

He says it is exciting new territory for Te Mahi Ako as a private training enterprise (PTE).

“Being a programme manager feels like we're on a bleeding edge. We're now more invested in the totality of the learner’s journey. Before, we were solely in charge of assessing. We were very much the adjudicators at the finish line, whereas now we're the support team for the whole race,” Dan says.

“Education brings people into one another's lives and the true value of it is what is exchanged. So while it's important that a learner achieves their goals, it's also incredibly important how we made them feel as we were doing that.”

Education is a passion for Dan and has been a recurring theme throughout his life.

After graduating from Victoria University of Wellington with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Music, he trained to be a high school teacher, a job he did part-time while pursuing his other passion – music.

“I was playing in bands after hours. I had a touring Irish band that went through the all the Irish bars in the lower half of the North Island,” he says.

This led him to work as a radio producer for about seven years.

“Over that time, my performing life really took a turn and I started creating music for arts festivals.”

Following that, he went on an OE to Canada where he studied libretto writing at the University of British Columbia, re-sparking his passion for education.

“I came back to New Zealand, really energized to start to teach music to adults,” Dan says.

He got involved at Whitireia Community Polytechnic, soon becoming a co-programme manager before then focussing on teaching.

His next opportunity came along when Te Mahi Ako was looking for a programme manager. Dan says he saw a chance to draw upon his background and experience to bolster the organisation’s offerings in the events and entertainment sector, enabling more people to build a viable career doing what they love through vocational education.

“I've always valued dreamers and loved to help them with the tools that they might need to actually turn their dreams into visions. So, we can really enable them to make a financially sustainable life doing these visionary things.”