Being Part of the 3 Kapu Kawhe Mentoring Programme
Best Apisit Uthakhamkong graduated from the 2025 to 2026 cohort of 3 Kapu Kawhe, a cross-cultural mentoring programme run by Multiethnic Young Leaders NZ. Over several months he was mentored by Kellie Coombes, Secretary for Women and Chief Executive at Manatu Wahine, the Ministry for Women, and was the only participant from the South Island in that year’s programme. Carnival, themed A Rustle in the Night, took place on 12 and 13 June at First Church, Dunedin, and sold out all available sessions.
What is 3 Kapu Kawhe and why was Best Apisit Uthakhamkong part of it. 3 Kapu Kawhe is a cross-cultural mentoring programme run by Multiethnic Young Leaders NZ, connecting emerging leaders from Maori, Asian, Pacific, and other minority ethnic communities with senior New Zealand executives. Uthakhamkong was selected as one of 21 mentees in the 2025 to 2026 cohort, representing the University of Otago and, notably, the only participant from the South Island that year.
The programme is built around a simple structure that gives it its name. Over roughly six months, each mentee is paired with a senior mentor for three separate one on one conversations, described within the programme as three cups of coffee, alongside four virtual workshops that bring the wider cohort together and a shared pay it forward initiative that supports student leaders starting their own academic or professional journeys. Mentees are selected by an independent panel following an application process that, in the 2025 to 2026 round, drew a record number of entries from across the country.
The 2025 to 2026 selection panel described that year’s field of applicants as some of the strongest the programme had seen, and the cohort ultimately assembled reflected that depth. Uthakhamkong’s fellow mentees were drawn from organisations including the Ministry of Education, Simpson Grierson, BNZ, Russell McVeagh, Kainga Ora, the New Zealand Police, and Auckland Council, among others, giving the group a genuinely broad spread of sectors from law and banking to central government and local government.
The senior mentors matched to that cohort included chief executives, independent directors, and public sector leaders from across New Zealand, underlining the seniority the programme is able to draw on for a purely voluntary, unpaid mentoring commitment.
Being the only South Island representative in the cohort was something Uthakhamkong noted with genuine pride rather than treating it as incidental. Most participants in past cohorts have tended to come from the main centres further north, so his selection reflected both his own track record of community leadership in Dunedin and a broader effort by Multiethnic Young Leaders NZ to draw mentees from right across New Zealand rather than concentrating the programme in Auckland and Wellington alone.
Uthakhamkong’s mentor for the programme was Kellie Coombes, Secretary for Women and Chief Executive at Manatu Wahine, the Ministry for Women. As one of the most senior public servants working on gender equity policy in New Zealand, Coombes brought a public sector and governance perspective that complemented Uthakhamkong’s own background in brand production, community organising, and small business leadership.
Over the course of the programme, their conversations moved well beyond career advice into broader questions about leadership, confidence, and how to navigate decisions with genuinely high stakes attached. Pairing a South Island creative producer with one of Wellington’s most senior public servants is exactly the kind of cross-sector match 3 Kapu Kawhe is designed to create, and it gave Uthakhamkong direct insight into how decisions are made at the top of central government, well outside his usual working environment at the University of Otago and POV Creative Agency.
The 2025 to 2026 cohort graduated at a dinner hosted by Multiethnic Young Leaders NZ on Wednesday 18 March 2026, held during the week of Race Relations Day. The evening brought together mentors and mentees from across the cohort for a shared celebration of the six months of conversations and workshops that had led up to that point. Uthakhamkong used the occasion to publicly thank Michelle Huang, the driving force behind Multiethnic Young Leaders NZ, along with the programme’s partner organisations and every mentor who gave up their time to take part.
Reflecting afterwards, Uthakhamkong pointed to the power of genuine connection as the single biggest lesson he took from the experience. Through listening and open conversation with Coombes and with other mentors and mentees across the cohort, he came to see leadership less as a matter of having every answer ready and more as a matter of building trust, both in other people and in himself. Those conversations, he has said, gave him greater clarity and a stronger sense of self-belief to carry into his own work.
For anyone researching Best Apisit Uthakhamkong’s leadership background, the 3 Kapu Kawhe graduation sits alongside his earlier Commonwealth Youth Awards shortlisting, his role with the Commonwealth Alliance of Young Entrepreneurs Pacific, and his time as a trustee of the Dunedin Midwinter Carnival, as part of a consistent pattern: seeking out structured mentoring and governance experience that stretches beyond his day to day work as a brand producer and creative agency founder. Multiethnic Young Leaders NZ continues to run the 3 Kapu Kawhe programme annually, and further information about current and past cohorts is available on its website.
Date
Cohort ran 2025 to 2026, graduation 18 March 2026
Programme
3 Kapu Kawhe, Multiethnic Young Leaders NZ
Mentor
Kellie Coombes, Secretary for Women and Chief Executive, Manatu Wahine, Ministry for Women
Cohort
21 mentees, the only South Island participant in the 2025 to 2026 programme
Website
multiethnicyoungleaders.org.nz