I am deeply committed to addressing the ills of poverty. More Indigenous people experience extreme poverty than non-Indigenous people across the globe. While this issue is complex and without a clear solution, exercising agency has been identified as a potential vehicle to address the ills of poverty and colonisation.

Exercising agency, empowerment and engagement have been the focus of much of my career. I've researched how the education sector could create employment through how they engage with rural Māori and people with disability. At the Deloitte Social Impact Practice, a consulting team dedicated to social innovation, I designed engagement strategies – part of overhauling the system to prevent children from being removed from their families. I've worked on projects exploring how to devolve decision-making from government to community. I will continue to explore this area through my DPhil. I was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand by a single Māori mother.