The lifelong adventures and unique lived experiences of Dr. Ihirangi Heke have forged a specialized skillset and depth of knowledge that are now highly sought after worldwide. For over three decades, he has been at the forefront of building population health and wellbeing programs rooted in traditional environmental knowledge. In 2007, he developed the Atua Matua Māori Health Framework, an innovative system that is now taught across several domestic and international universities.

At its core, Atua Matua is the process of gathering ancient, indigenous, environmental knowledge and repurposing it for contemporary use. It reawakens and reapplies ancestral thinking across a vast array of disciplines—from industry leaders redefining how they care for the environment, to high-performance athletes unlocking the potential for environmentally centered training, to the cutting-edge development of AI for Humanity.