Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Aligned Momentum ("we", "us", "our") is a Hamilton, New Zealand-based AI governance advisory and corporate cognitive performance consultancy, operated by Mark Powell. This policy covers alignedmomentum.co.nz, our client portal, and our 8-Week AI & Mindfulness online course.

2. Information we collect

We collect information directly from you, depending on how you interact with us:

• Contact details — name and email (plus phone, if you choose to give it), submitted through our contact form, questionnaires, or an online course purchase.
• Questionnaire and journal responses — if you're a consulting client, your baseline/follow-up survey answers, feedback, and journal entries, used to measure programme outcomes.
• Course progress — which modules you've viewed and your knowledge-check scores, so we (and you) can track your own progress.
• Course activity you choose to add — reflections, worksheets (including the AI skills check task, which Mark grades), commitments, your practice plan and reminder time, practice you log, Team Library entries, and any “Holiday mode” or check-in request.
• Wellbeing questionnaire — the five questions of the WHO-5 Well-Being Index, asked with the baseline, follow-up and 3-month questionnaires.
• Letters to yourself — a letter to your graduation self (kept sealed until you finish) and, if you write one, a letter to your future self that we email back to you about six months later.
• Practice from the EnlightenMe app — only if you switch on practice syncing in the app: the date and length of each meditation you finish, matched to your portal account by your email address, so it counts toward your practice days. Nothing else from the app is shared, and you can switch syncing off at any time.
• Colleague perspective — if you nominate colleagues, their email addresses (used only to send them a three-question form) and their answers.
• Payment information — if you purchase the online course, payment is handled entirely by Stripe. We never see or store your card details — we only receive confirmation that payment succeeded, along with the name and email you gave Stripe at checkout.
• Marketing consent — whether you've opted in to receive updates from us, recorded against your contact record.

3. How we use your information

• To deliver the service you signed up for — consulting engagement, portal access, or online course access.
• To send you access links, progress updates, and (only if you've opted in) marketing communications.
• To measure and report on programme outcomes. Each participant's data stays private to their own account — never shared with their employer. Leadership sees progress only as team aggregates, and only for groups of five or more people. Journal entries are confidential: they are read only by Aligned Momentum (currently Mark Powell), once a week, to check how participants are going and offer support. Journals, reflections, letters, colleague ratings and individual wellbeing answers are never shown to an employer. A reflection is shared with your pod, or anonymously with other learners, only if you tick the box for that reflection. Colleague ratings are shown to you only as an average, once at least two colleagues have answered.
• To run the parts of the programme you opt into: pod sharing, anonymous sharing of a reflection with other learners, practice reminders at the time you choose, buddy matching for online-course intakes, and follow-up emails in the 12 weeks after you graduate.
• To offer support. If your wellbeing answers suggest things may be hard, we show you a private message with support options. Mark only learns about it if you ask him for a check-in.
• To improve our programmes based on real usage and feedback.

We do not sell your information to anyone, for any reason.

4. Who we share it with

We use a small number of service providers to run this business, each only for the specific job they do:

• Stripe — processes online course payments. Stripe's own privacy policy governs how they handle your payment details.
• Google Workspace — hosts our data (Sheets) and sends our emails (Gmail). Your data stays within our own Google account, not shared with Google for any other purpose.
• Hostinger — hosts this website and serves it through a content delivery network (CDN). Like any web host, its servers see your IP address and standard request details when pages load.
• Google Fonts — a small number of pages (the EnlightenMe app policy and account-deletion pages) load typefaces from Google Fonts, so your browser requests those font files from Google's servers.

Apart from Google Analytics on public pages (section 7), we don't use any third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking services on this site.

These providers store and process information on servers outside New Zealand, for example in the United States. They act on our behalf, only to provide their service to us, and we remain responsible for your information under the Privacy Act 2020.

5. How we protect your information

Portal sign-in uses single-use magic links and hashed session tokens — we never store your password in a readable form if you set one. Access to client data is restricted to what each portal role (Participant, Executive, Admin) is authorised to see. That said, no online system is 100% secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security of information transmitted over the internet. If a privacy breach occurs that is likely to cause you serious harm, we will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as soon as practicable, as the Privacy Act 2020 requires.

6. Cookies and local storage

Our portal stores a session token in your browser's local storage so you don't have to sign in every time you visit. The token is stored only in your browser and is sent to us with each portal request over HTTPS so we can confirm it's you; signing out revokes it. We don't use tracking cookies or third-party advertising pixels.

7. Website analytics

Our public web pages use Google Analytics 4 to understand, in aggregate, how the site is used: which pages are visited, roughly where visitors come from, and which links are clicked. IP addresses are anonymised by Google, advertising features are switched off, and we do not use this data to identify you. Analytics is not loaded on the signed-in portal or course pages, and it respects your browser's Do Not Track setting. You can also block it with any standard content blocker.

8. How long we keep your information

• Portal and course account data (contact details, questionnaire and journal responses, course progress) — kept while your account is active, and for up to 30 days after you ask us to delete it, so the deletion can be completed and confirmed.
• Letters to yourself — the future-self letter is kept until it has been emailed to you, then for the life of your account so you can reread it. Ask us any time to delete it before it is sent.
• Colleague nominations and answers — kept with your account; nominated colleagues' email addresses are not used for anything else and are never added to our mailing list.
• Anonymised survey aggregates — cohort-level results with all identifying details removed may be kept for up to 3 years to report programme outcomes.
• Contact-form enquiries — kept while we're in contact with you; if you've opted in to marketing, until you opt out or ask us to delete your details.
• Purchase records — kept for as long as New Zealand tax and accounting law requires (currently seven years).

9. Your rights

Under New Zealand's Privacy Act 2020 (and as good practice for visitors anywhere), you can ask us to access, correct, or delete the personal information we hold about you at any time. Just email us — see below. If you've opted in to marketing emails, every email includes a way to opt out.

10. Children's privacy

Our services are intended for people aged 18 and over making their own professional development or business decisions. We don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 18; if you believe we have, contact us and we'll delete it.

11. Changes to this policy

We'll update the date at the top of this page if this policy changes. Continued use of our site or services after a change means you accept the updated policy.

12. Contact us

Questions about this policy, or a request about your own data: support@alignedmomentum.co.nz. For the EnlightenMe mobile app specifically, see the EnlightenMe App Privacy Policy and account deletion page.