Wise Group, the national winners of the 2026 Aotearoa AI Hackathon at the AI Summit in Wellington
A huge congratulations to the Wise Group team who took out the national final of the Aotearoa Hackathon 2026 with their AI-powered tool that helps Workwise employment consultants support more people with mental health and addiction challenges into meaningful work.
After winning the regional hackathon sponsored by TAIAO and hosted at the University of Waikato, the Wise Group team was one of the top four teams selected from across New Zealand to present at the AI Summit in September where they were the overall winners chosen by the audience.
Wise Group is a whānau of charitable organisations that provide mental health, addiction and wellbeing services and resources across Aotearoa. The Wise Group team crowdsourced a problem to take into the Hackathon, and Workwise, part of the Wise Group whānau, put one forward.
Workwise is one of New Zealand's largest providers of Individual Placement and Support (IPS), an evidence-based approach that helps people with mental health and addiction challenges into meaningful, sustainable work.
To support this work, the team created Te Ara Taea, “the pathway to possibility”: an AI-powered tool that helps consultants find the right employers to approach, prepare for that first conversation, plan a visit route, and turn spoken visit notes into a written record in about 90 seconds rather than an evening of paperwork. Every AI suggestion stays a suggestion, the consultant decides. The result is more time for consultants to spend meaningfully with the people in their service, and with employers.
While creating the platform during the Hackathon event, the team surprisingly spent most of the first day without writing code. Instead, they focussed their efforts on mapping out and testing user journeys and experience of their platform. They even made time for an important a trip across the road for a New Zealand award winning steak and cheese pie!
The Wise Group team’s experience showed that with the growth of AI tools you don’t have to be a developer to turn a good idea into something tangible. Instead, all members of the team from a range of backgrounds can equally contribute and work together in new ways. For the team, it was a demonstration of how AI could make creating technology a much more collaborative and accessible process. What set them apart was their strong belief in the work that the Workwise employment consultants do and the difference it makes to people’s lives. As Ian from the team put it, “that passion fed into the technology side of things.” And ultimately, it took them to the winning spot at the AI Summit.
Te Ara Taea is a prototype, not a finished product. Workwise teams are testing it now, and the focus from here is on what it takes to move from something built to something consultants can rely on every day, alongside expanding what it can do beyond the point of placement. It has been well received so far.
Congratulations again from the TAIAO team. We can’t wait to see where the solution goes next.
