Nigel Owens is a Welsh International, World Cup and Heineken Cup rugby union referee. He was the only Welsh referee at the 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cups and is regarded as the first openly gay man to referee at the highest level.  He made his World Cup debut in Lyon, France in September 2007 refereeing the Argentina vs. Georgia game. Widely acknowledged as the best referee in the rugby union, Nigel was chosen for the prestigious 2015 World Cup final between New Zealand and Australia.

As a patron for the LGBTQ community in sport, in 2007 Owens was named ‘Gay Sports Personality of the Year‘ by gay rights group Stonewall at their annual awards ceremony in London and in 2011 he was made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards at their National Eisteddfod in Wrexham. In 2016, Nigel’s services to sport were recognised in the highest order as he was appointed a MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Outside of sports, Nigel is also one of the presenters on S4C’s ‘Jonathan’, a rugby-themed Welsh language chat show hosted by former Welsh international Jonathan Davies. He also co-presents the sports-themed Welsh language chat show ‘Bwrw’r Bar’.

Nigel is an extremely popular and entertaining after-dinner speaker, able to share stories from his vast sporting career or to talk more candidly about diversity and the LGBTQ community.

Bryce Shearer began his rugby playing days at a young age making his way through the grades representing his region then the NZ Heartland Age Grade Side before he moved to Auckland city where he was part of multiple representative sides for both Counties Manukau & North Harbour.

During his time playing Premier rugby Bryce had also become a competitive Crossfit Athlete spending his offseason from rugby each year competing at local and international competitions.
Bryce quickly realized the benefits carrying over from the work he was putting in inside the crossfit gym transferring to his performances on the rugby pitch.

This spurred him on to compete multiple Crossfit and S&C courses including ASCA Level 1, Crossfit Trainer Level 2, Birdbox Coaching Development & Crossfit Gymnastics which gave Bryce the skillset to continue to apply his practical experience to other athletes inside his now owned CrossFit Affiliate “CrossFit Kia Maia”

Darryl Suasua is a New Zealand born Samoan who has forged a career in education and sport. He has accumulated many years of experience in dealing with many different people in a variety of settings. Coaching in Japan, France, China, Philippines, Fiji, Samoa and New Zealand has provided plenty of opportunity to grow and develop networks with a number of the top rugby coaches in the world.

 As a high performance coach Darryl has worked at International level winning back to back world cups with the Blackferns, and coaching the Blackferns Sevens to a silver medal in the 2009 World cup. In 2012 – 2013 he lead the coaching of Manu Samoa. The team in this time rose to its highest ever world ranking at number 7.

From 2016 - 2019 Darryl coached at Provincial rugby level in New Zealand with Counties Manukau. In the same year he coached the Counties Manukau sevens to it ‘s first National title in 21 years. The following year he coordinated the programme for both the men’s and women’s sevens. Both the men’s and women’s sevens won the 2017 national titles.

He was back on the international stage in 2022 with the Philippine Men’s sevens team and in Super Rugby Aupiki as assistant with Chiefs Manawa.

Jeremy Treece is two time National Championship 15s & 7s coach that developed the FIFTH Rugby Program to provide coaches with a coaching road map for their programs. Jeremy started two college clubs and grew them both to varsity status with limited resources over his 15-year coaching career.

Jeremy was inducted into the Franciscan University Athletic Hall of Fame in 2014 as a coach and player. He also founded the American Rugby Coaches Association in 2014 with former All Black captain Tana Umaga to provide continuing education for rugby coaches in the U.S.

Jeremy served as High Performance Director for NSCRO from 2016-2019 and established the NSCRO All Star Championship that evolved into the NCR All Star Challenge. Jeremy now serves as NCR Chief Executive Officer serving 650 college teams and 18,000 student athletes.