Meet our speakers, hosts and facilitators

Hosts

Ria Earp

Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Pikiao l co-MC

Ria developed extensive leadership and management experience in health, social services and the public sector over her career. Ria now provides contracted services as an advisor (policy and service design) and locum manager (especially in the NGO sector). This includes Board appointments and advisory committees and project work in a range of health services. Her experience included senior management roles in policy and service management (including Women’s, Māori and Youth Affairs) and Māori Health. Ria also managed Mary Potter Hospice for just over 10 years before ‘retiring’ to set up her own consultancy. She has a BA (Anthropology), MA (Applied - Social Work) and Masters of Business Administration and has a deep interest in quality health services and Māori community development.

Dr Karen Vaughan

Director of Hummingbird Effect Ltd l co-MC

Karen is a director of Hummingbird Effect Ltd, where she is an education consultant, mediator, and facilitator. She is the Project Lead for the Flourish Women+ Health Summit and has been a RANZCOG Community Representative since 2018. A former Chief Researcher at NZCER, her cross-field research has been influential in national, high-profile education initiatives and internationally in youth pathways and experiential learning. Karen is a director on the board of The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, an executive board member for Work-Integrated Learning New Zealand, and a professional member of the Resolution Institute. Karen is also a Senior Research Fellow at Te Ngāpera Chair of Restorative Practice at Victoria University of Wellington.

Luke Crawford

Ngāti Porou, Tūwharetoa l Kaumātua

Luke is Kaumātua for He Hono Wāhine RANZCOG. He has been leading tikanga and te ao Māori engagement across Government, Communities, his whānau and most recently New Zealand Rugby as Kaumātua to the Māori All Blacks and NZ Rugby.

Wendy Dallas-Katoa

Kāti Mamoe, Waitaha l Kaumātua

Wendy is Kaumātua for He Hono Wāhine RANZCOG. Wendy has over 35 years of experience in the health sector in a variety of roles, representing Māori interests in health on a number of boards and organisations including: South Island Māori Cancer Leadership Group - Cervical Screening, National Breastfeeding Association, Mana Whenua ki Waitaha Charitable Trust, Pegasus Community Board and Te Kāhuio o Papaki Ka Tai -PHO Primary Health Care Māori Advisory Group (Chairperson).

Speakers

Professor Beverley Lawton (ONZM)

Ngāti Porou, Founder/Director of Te Tātai Hauora o Hine Centre for Women's Health Research, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington

Bev was appointed an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit by the Queen for services to women’s health in 2005, made a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal College of General Practice in 2017 and awarded the Australasian Menopause Society Award in 2019 for her contribution to women’s health.

Bev's work seeks to reduce preventable harm and death for Māori and non-Māori women, their children and whānau. With a kaupapa Māori lens she focuses on clinical care pathways, systems and structural determinants of health to identify how these can better perform for women, babies and whānau. Her research on women’s and children’s health has led to changes in policy and practice in Aotearoa. This includes informing the national policy on cervical screening and the establishment of the national Severe Maternal Morbidity (SMM) monitoring programme in Aotearoa.

Dr George Parker

Lecturer in Health Service Delivery, School of Health, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington

George Parker (they/them) is Pūkenga Ratoa Hauora | Lecturer in Health Service Delivery in the School of Health at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. Prior to joining Te Herenga Waka, George taught in the School of Midwifery at Otago Polytechnic and in the School of Medicine at the University of Auckland. George is a registered midwife and has previously practiced midwifery in both community and hospital settings. They also have extensive experience working in the community sector in health consumer advocacy and people-centred health policy analysis and advice. George researches in the area of equity in health service delivery for minority groups, in particular, people with a diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC).

George's research focuses on sexual and reproductive health service delivery and the application of critical feminist inter sectional and reproductive justice perspectives in pursuit of health equity and inclusion in these health care settings. George's projects to date have focused on the intersections of fat phobia and racial discrimination in maternity/perinatal care settings, and the social construction of fetal person hood and criminalisation of pregnancy.

George's work is largely qualitative and centres peoples' experiences and affects as central to health service inquiry.

Max Rashbrooke

Writer and journalist

Max Rashbrooke writes about democratic renewal and economic inequality and their potential to shape societies for better or worse. Max, New Zealand based but globally engaged, carries out original research and brings it to a wide audience through books, collaborations with artists and data visualisation experts, and public lectures such as Max's TED.com talk on upgrading democracy, which has had over 1M views. Max's writing and commentary appears in outlets such as the Guardian and Prospect magazine, and Max writes a fortnightly column for Stuff, New Zealand’s largest news site. His latest book is Too Much Money: How Wealth Disparities Are Unbalancing Aotearoa New Zealand, published by Bridget Williams Books in November 2021