Bio

My father hails from the villages of Siufaga and Matautu in the district of Falelatai and  Fasitoo Uta. He left for Auckland in the late 1950s and met my mum, who was from Faleula, in early 1960s. They soon afterwards married and I was their youngest daughter at the time.



They bought a house in Mangere and I went to school in Robertson Road Primary, Mangere Intermediate and Nga Tapuwae College - the latter two being now merged into Southern Cross Campus of which I am an elected community Board of trustees member.



After my secondary schooling, I left for University of Auckland and studied towards a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English and Geography. I was the first to graduate in my family with a degree and with my parents support I was able to pursue a Masters degree majoring in Geography.



Upon completing my degrees, I studied an extra year and got a Diploma of teaching at Auckland College of  Education in secondary teaching with my two main subjects being my teaching subjects. The following year I won a job as an English teacher at Tangaroa College for 6 years.



By my 6th year of teaching, I knew that it was time for me to try something new and the opportunity of working on Ministry of Education contracts came up for which I continued for several more years with the last being as a Team Solutions facilitator.



I went back to teaching in 2007 for 3 years as an Early childhood education lecturer for AUT University but due to changes in government and funding cuts, I was unable to continue and won a job at Te Wananga o Aotearoa in 2010, firstly as a student support advisor and now as a degree learning advisor.


I've since completed a second Masters degree in Creative Writing, in 2012, with AUT University and have begun self publishing some of my works as Picture books of ancient Samoan stories, a collection of plays and anticipating a collection of short stories, poetry and novels...