Tahu Kukutai is a Māori academic from Aotearoa New Zealand and one of the world's leading voices on Indigenous data sovereignty. Her work sits at the intersection of research, policy and advocacy — reshaping how data about Indigenous peoples is collected, owned and used. A founding member of both the Māori Data Sovereignty Network Te Mana Raraunga and the Global Indigenous Data Alliance, Kukutai has helped build the international movement for Indigenous data rights from the ground up. She co-edited Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an Agenda — a landmark volume credited with founding an entirely new field of study and sparking a global wave of data activism among Indigenous communities.