“It is people, it is people, it is people”

“He aha te mea nui? Māku e kii atu, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

What is the most important thing in the world? Well, let me tell you, it is people, it is people, it is people.”

In te reo Māori, the Indigenous language of Aotearoa (New Zealand), this whakataukī (proverb) was at the center of my experience as a Bloomberg Harvard Summer Fellow. Through this program, which places graduate students in city halls around the world to support mayors’ key priorities, I matched with Hutt City Council under the leadership of former Mayor Campbell Barry and Chief Executive Jo Miller and supervision of Rochelle Carrig and Jarred Griffiths, all who supported my project from ideation to delivery. The dedication and determination of the many public servants I worked with demonstrated this value and a commitment—rooted in a genuine respect for people and the land—to making local government services, resources, and representation more inclusive and accessible to everyone.

My first impression after arriving in Aotearoa was that I was in a land and country in the making. As you travel across both islands, you see how tectonic plates collide and create soaring mountains and fuel volcanoes, while glaciers and rivers have carved deep fjords and coastlines over millions of years. Fragile yet resilient natural ecosystems sustain flora and fauna found nowhere else on Earth. I was struck by how Aotearoa reminded me of my home state of Arizona: both are beautiful landscapes where survival depends on a deep connection to the land and the people, especially for Indigenous peoples who have preserved the land for generations.

Throughout my time at HKS, I have had access to unique opportunities to apply what I learn in the classroom and collaborate with communities worldwide. As a student in Nation Building II, our student team partnered with an Indigenous nonprofit organization based in Western Australia to develop a growth strategy for First Australian youth empowerment and leadership development nationwide. This applied global experience provided me with context and awareness of working on Indigenous self-determination and community engagement in the region. 

After moving to Wellington and starting at Hutt City Council, I learned how Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) was at the center of the mahi (work) in the local community. Since 1840, this treaty has served as a founding document between Indigenous Māori iwi (communities) and the British Crown. The treaty was breached countless times through settler colonialism, causing significant displacement and harm to generations of Māori iwi. Now, commissions are working to hear claims and redress historical wrongs: established 50 years ago this month, the Waitangi Tribunal has led to the New Zealand Government negotiating more than 80 Te Tiriti settlements with Māori iwi, transferring over 2.7 billion NZD (1.5 billion USD) in financial and commercial redress, along with returning land and other assets to iwi as a form of recompense for historical violations. By ensuring Indigenous voices are both respected and represented in decisions and legislation, I gained a deeper understanding of an emerging model of multicultural governance worth protecting and preserving.

I joined the new Engagement team at Hutt City Council to honor and apply the principles of Te Tiriti to my project with local communities. While there was a perception that trust in public institutions was declining, local government needed tools and metrics to track and target interventions more effectively. After reviewing citywide survey data, it became clear that trust in local government varied widely depending on respondents’ background, circumstance, and post code. These findings underscored the need to make engagement more inclusive, accessible, and effective for everyone in Lower Hutt. I was responsible for visualizing a baseline report summarizing initial trust and engagement levels across all demographics citywide, proposing target outcomes to enhance civic participation and improve levels of distrust, and developing applied measurement and evaluation reporting tool based on the Council’s Te Whiringa Engagement Framework, a new initiative designed to reframe community engagement from a transaction to a partnership centered on trust, safety, and reciprocity. 

To address this challenge, I had the opportunity to apply solutions from my classes at HKS and the free frameworks and tool kits provided by the Bloomberg Center for Cities and its extensive program for mayors and senior city leaders, the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. Resources such as Professor Liz McKenna’s Power Metrics: Measuring What Matters to Build a Multiracial Democracy also provided the applied best practices to develop a proposal to co-create solutions with the community and strengthen local engagement efforts in a targeted and culturally responsive way.

Working alongside colleagues across different teams, I built strong cross-functional relationships and applied a human-centered design approach to ensure our solutions reflected community priorities. I designed the city’s first reporting process to capture engagement data and feedback and conducted usability interviews and co-design sessions to make sure the tool would be practical for the team responsible for long-term tracking and reporting. Through this iterative process, the tool was aligned with the local action plan and responsive to staff needs in the field. Through this partnership, we prototyped a dashboard to visualize data in real-time and build the foundation for citywide analysis of trends and evaluation of all engagement projects across Lower Hutt. Our collaboration created the city’s first system to measure trust and inclusion in engagement and provided a framework that can continue to adapt and respond to the needs of the community. 

My time at Hutt City Council challenged my assumptions about impact in local government and reaffirmed what the Māori proverb instilled from the beginning: the most important thing is people. While policy frameworks and analytic tools can guide and structure the work, this experience deepened my appreciation for the potential of local governance to drive real, tangible change in communities. I found working in local government provided me with opportunities to explore a new career path while working directly with people to center their needs and lived experiences in our work. Through building relationships with communities rooted in trust and transparency, I learned how impact in local government can be measured not only by what we report or produce, but by the strength of the connections we build and the futures we create and work towards together. 

He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

Photos courtesy of Adam Delgado and Zenstratus / Adobe Stock