'I understand only too well the challenges of our professional practice worlds. These tools have also helped me immensely in my ongoing professional journey'.

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With a professional life spanning over three decades in Canada, remote Australia, and in Aotearoa New Zealand, as a social, community and cultural researcher, organisational advisor, senior education manager, as an adult educator, and as a businessperson, when asked about my professional identity, always I am a sociologist.

 

My work has led multiple teams and community, government, education and organisational development initiatives, including: community needs analyses, social and environmental impact analyses, scoping analysis, participatory action research, stakeholder engagement frameworks, orgnisational and community ethnography, policy analysis and development, business sustainability, social enterprise development; and housing, employment, poverty, youth, and children's research. 

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My 12 year ethnographic research with Ngai Tahu (Maori iwi of Te Waipounamu (South Island of New Zealand), welcomed and invited by kaumatua (tribal elders) and leaders of great mana, who shared their experiences of identity and whakapapa; and my community research with many communities, Maori, Pacific, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, and refugee and migrant; have informed my teaching of Professional Leadership Practice, Professional Practice with Diversity, Advancing Professional Practice, Racism and Ethnicity, Biculturalism, Social Policy, Sociology, Supervision and Management in Human Services, and Research, across schools of Health, Nursing, Social Work, Sociology, Anthropology, Maori Studies, and Indigenous Knowledges in vocational and university sectors.

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In 1995 I co-founded and directed Coffee Culture Limited, a new coffee concept, and T Teahouse, in the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.

 

I currently work as Principal Academic in a suite of postgraduate Professional Practice programmes designed to equip practitioners, mostly working in health and social service roles across diverse sectors to develop their critical leadership, skills, to work with diversity, to work interprofessionally, and to use research and evidence to advance their professional practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. 

 

For me the privilege of this professional journey, has provided rich experience, skills and understanding of our professional and community worlds.  I aim always to bring a sociological imagination to every professional encounter, and every student, practitioner, community and organisation I engage with.

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I see real leadership is nuanced, often quiet, sometimes silent; seen and felt by those who are just actively getting on with it in selfless yet critically informed and astute ways, contributing to seemingly small outcomes for humanity.

 

These small outcomes are events and practices and form part of the wicked solutions needed for sustaining and thriving in our professional lives, buffeted by the social issues of our times.