Billie-Jean Potaka Ayton is Principal at Kaiti School in Te Tairāwhiti. She has been Principal there for 16 years and has brought the school from a 10-year trend of roll decline with a roll in 2009 of 130 to a roll of over 400 today. Kaiti School caters for years 1-8 students in bilingual and mainstream education pathways. Her leadership style comes from her grandparents who were instrumental in her early life and education. Billie-Jean was part of the first cohort of principals in Te Tairāwhiti to complete Springboard Trust’s Strategic Leadership for Principals Programme in 2016.
She is a member of the Māori Education Ministerial Advisory Group, has been on the ERO Principal’s Advisory group and is a ERO Leadership Partner. Billie-Jean was a recipient of the Woolf Fisher 2019 fellowship award where she traveled the world including visiting schools in Hawaii and Los Angeles and a week-long boot camp at Harvard University on leadership. In 2025 she was awarded an MNZM Honours award for services to Māori and Education.