Jannat Maqbool
Strategic Advisor
Y5
Jannat Maqbool is a tech-for-good advocate with nearly three decades of experience turning emerging technologies into real-world impact across Australia and New Zealand. She cut her teeth in financial services, where she helped lead the rollout of New Zealand’s first online origination and credit-risk platform for vehicle finance—an early fintech milestone that broadened access to fairer lending. A passionate educator, Jannat then spent ten years strengthening digital capability in the vocational sector. During this period she founded and hosted the IoT Waikato event series, giving regional innovators a five-year platform to showcase practical Internet-of-Things solutions. Her civic-tech journey accelerated when she became Smart Cities Advisor to New Zealand’s fastest-growing city, where she helped bring to life the nation’s first public “Smart Space”—a living lab that connected councils, technology partners and citizens around data-driven urban projects. Jannat then helped launch one of New Zealand’s first AI Institutes and has been involved across the digital-twin ecosystem across Australia, New Zealand and, more recently, the United Kingdom, since 2019. Today she speaks about and advisers on data-driven innovation strategies, ethical AI adoption and the orchestration of sensor-to-cloud-to-analytics ecosystems that deliver measurable public value. At the summit, Jannat will present “From Sensors to Services: Governing an AIoT Digital Commons for Smart Cities.” In just 15 minutes she will aim to arm policy leaders, civic-tech professionals and digital strategists with a concise blueprint for transforming siloed IoT pilots into shared, secure and scalable civic infrastructure—ensuring communities reap the benefits of smarter, more responsive urban services.