WHAT'S YOUR STORY?
MINE started in a newsroom at 21, with a pregnancy I kept secret until my probationary period was completed.
I had almost no prior work experience - just a handful of holiday jobs as a teenager and a brief attachment with the then Native Lands Trust Board. After sitting the Fiji Seventh Form Examination, I attended the Fijian Affairs Board scholarship interviews - the exam results were all that stood between me and a place in the programme. But my dream of becoming an English teacher ended abruptly when my results came in two marks short of the passing rate. Two. Marks. And my parents couldn't afford university even if I had passed.
Two years into marriage and raising my first child, a friend who remembered our shared love of English in school reached out. "A reporter's role will be advertised soon - apply!" I needed no coaxing. I applied, attended the interview carefully concealing my second pregnancy, and a few days later was told I got the job.
I started the week of the 2003 South Pacific Games and within days landed my first front page: visiting women of the Falun Gong, a religious movement, arrested at the height of the regional sporting event and ordered to leave the country, sparking uproar among human rights activists and groups.
Twenty-four years later, I am still here. Still writing, still seeking out stories that don't get told often enough. Still listening. What a blessing it has been to love what you do and do what you love - for a living.
WHAT I DO
I write about the Pacific – in honest, realistic ways. That means covering gender-based violence without sanitising it, reporting on disability inclusion without reducing people to their conditions, and asking the questions that press releases leave unanswered.
At The Fiji Times across two separate stints, I have sat among grassroots market vendors and in high-level ministerial forums including the UN CEDAW Committee’s first-ever Pacific Technical Cooperation session in Suva, Fiji, from 7–11 April 2025. Through my work, I have examined and reported on Fiji’s gender data gap, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and the failures of a four-decade GBV response. My awareness-raising journalism has run to 20-page dedicated supplements on lupus and menopause, topics that Fiji’s media rarely touches with the depth they deserve.
I write, edit, design and document. But it all starts with listening.
WHERE HAVE I WORKED
My career has moved between daily journalism, government communications and the development sector, following the work that mattered most at the time.
As Public Relations Officer and spokesperson for the Fiji Corrections Service, I managed crisis communications and media relations at an institutional level. With SPC’s Human Rights and Social Development Division and the PHAMA Plus programme, I learned what it means to communicate development outcomes to audiences that include both village communities and international donors. I have supported communications for the Triennial Conference of Pacific Women, Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture, Pacific ministerial forums and the inaugural planning meeting of the Pacific Traditional Leaders Forum, to name a few.
PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION
· 2012 SeaWeb Journalist of the Year
· 2025 FAME Award Winner for Best Coverage of a Major News Event
