Beyond Immigration: Helping People Build Their Future
After more than a decade at Immigration New Zealand, Annie Kim is building Airie - an AI-powered decision intelligence platform helping people make better education, career and migration decisions.
Annie Kim spent more than a decade inside Immigration New Zealand. She processed visas, oversaw operations, led digital transformation projects, and saw the system from almost every angle. But the more she understood the system, the more one question stayed with her.
"Immigration is quite often seen as a black box," she says. "Even for those of us who lived and breathed it, it was hard to navigate. So how difficult must it be for the people on the outside?"
That question stayed with her after she left the organisation. Eventually, it became Airie - a platform designed to help people navigate life-changing decisions about study, work and immigration with clarity and confidence.
Annie isn’t trying to simplify paperwork. She’s trying to help people navigate the interconnected decisions that shape their future.
The missing middle became the opportunity
Working inside Immigration New Zealand gave Annie a perspective few founders have. She understood why applicants found the system overwhelming, but she also understood the pressures on the people assessing every application.
What struck her most wasn't what the system offered - it was what it didn't.
For years, people have largely had two choices: navigate the immigration process themselves or seek full representation through a third-party professional.
"Most people don't need help with everything," Annie explains. "They've often done 95% of the research already.
What they need is that last 5% - the certainty or confidence that they've connected the right dots."
That missing middle became the opportunity.
Rather than replacing agents, advisers or other professionals, Annie wanted to build something that gave people clarity earlier in their journey while making expert support easier to access when they needed it.
Students weren't choosing programmes - they were choosing futures
As Airie evolved, Annie realised international students represented one of the biggest opportunities to make a difference.
"The students have the added complexity of understanding the education system, the options, what those options can lead to from an immigration perspective, and what employment opportunities are available," she says. "We saw a huge opportunity to bring all of that together."
Choosing where to study is rarely just about education. Students aren’t just choosing a qualification. They’re weighing scholarships, career opportunities, visa pathways, employment prospects and ultimately whether that investment will help them build the future they’re hoping for.
Yet most of the information available today exists in silos.
"Everything is just a directory or a catalogue or a list of programmes," Annie says. "That doesn't answer the questions students are actually asking."
Airie creates a new layer of decision intelligence by connecting education, immigration and labour market data into a single decision-making experience.
The platform allows students to start their search from any starting point, receive personalised guidance, search scholarships, understand immigration pathways and collaborate with education counsellors and licensed immigration advice - all within a single experience. Students can also see where employment demand exists through sources including Seek and Trade Me and how different education pathways connect to real employment opportunities.
"Rather than saying, 'This might happen,' we're simply showing current data," Annie explains. "If there are this many vacancies for a particular occupation, and these are the study pathways that lead there, students can make informed decisions based on evidence."
Instead of asking, What should I study?, students can start with a much more meaningful question: What future am I trying to build?
Making good decisions starts with having the right information
Along the way, Annie discovered another challenge that technology alone couldn't solve: misinformation.
Many international students rely on offshore education agents to help them navigate New Zealand's education system. While many provide excellent guidance, offshore agents are exempt from New Zealand's immigration licensing requirements, meaning some students receive outdated or inaccurate advice. Some also don’t have access to many New Zealand education providers, which inadvertently limits options for the students they support.
"Sometimes visa applications are declined not because students don't meet the requirements," Annie says. "It's because they don't fully understand the requirements, or they haven't had the right people helping them understand what's needed."
That's why every student using Airie has access to licensed immigration expertise at no cost to them, and they can see all options that are available to them rather than only seeing the options someone else chooses to show them.
The financial side of education is another area Annie believes deserves a different approach.
Students aren’t just asking whether they can afford to study. They’re weighing scholarships, living costs, future earning potential and the long-term opportunities their education may create.
“Most people don’t invest in education because they want a qualification,” Annie says. “They invest because of the future they hope it will create.”
For Annie, transparency isn’t just a feature. It’s a value built into every step of the journey.
Building Airie meant learning to build a business, not just a product
Creating the platform was one challenge. Learning how to turn it into a scalable business was another.
Annie says Ministry of Awesome's Founder Catalyst programme helped shift her thinking at exactly the right time.
Working alongside Entrepreneur in Residence Dan Khan, one particular conversation helped her get a laser-focused perspective.
"Dan told me something that reframed how I thought about what I was doing: 'You're building a business, not a product.' That changed everything."
It pushed her to spend less time perfecting features and more time understanding customers, validating assumptions and building commercial traction.
As a solo founder, she says the programme also provided something equally valuable - a community.
"It keeps you accountable, motivated and connected to other people solving hard problems."
Dan Khan
Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Ministry of Awesome
Growth is coming one trusted conversation at a time
Today, Airie has partnerships with more than 20 education providers across New Zealand, including universities, polytechnics and private training establishments. It is also working with education agents across India, Vietnam, the Philippines and China ahead of the 2027 academic year.
The business model removes barriers by giving students free access to both the platform and expert support.
Interestingly, most of Airie's growth hasn't come through advertising.
"We've been testing with a modest number of students before scaling the platform," Annie says. "More and more, they're coming through referrals. Someone's mum's friend recommended Airie, or another student told them about us."
For Annie, those conversations are some of the strongest validation that she's solving a genuine problem.
As more countries compete for global talent, New Zealand has an opportunity to stand out
New Zealand has set an ambitious goal of doubling its international education sector to NZ$7.2 billion by 2034. At the same time, countries around the world are competing harder than ever to attract international students and skilled migrants.
Annie believes New Zealand already has many of the advantages students are looking for.
"We just need to leverage the advantages we have as a country," she says. "Small but mighty, with very high-quality education and an unmatched lifestyle."
She also believes New Zealand has an opportunity to lead the world in how AI is used to support international education.
"This hasn't been done anywhere else," she says. "New Zealand has an opportunity to show what's possible by using AI to make it easier for people to choose New Zealand—and succeed here."
Over the next six months, Airie will focus on expanding its education agent network, growing partnerships with providers and translating the platform into additional languages as it prepares to enter new markets.
For Annie, AI isn't replacing people—it's helping them do their best work
Despite building an AI company, Annie is quick to point out that technology should never replace human judgement.
Immigration decisions affect people's futures, their families and their livelihoods.
"There's always a human in the loop," she says. "We're not replacing agents or advisers. We're empowering them."
Airie isn’t about helping people submit visa applications. It’s about helping people make one of the biggest decisions of their lives with confidence.