Rooted in the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent SHE LEADS is an inspirational multimedia storytelling project presented by Pacific Trade Invest New Zealand. The initiative aims to inspires women everywhere to make meaningful contributions to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
The project started in New Caledonia, a French territory renowned for its rich cultural heritage and breathtaking landscapes. Over the course of a week, a small film crew delved into the entrepreneurial fabric of the island, capturing the stories and experiences of women who are shaping the economic landscape with their resilience and innovation.
With a rich bounty of content from so many inspiring figures, the initiative continued through other Pacific Islands, including the Cook Islands, Tonga and Samoa uncovering a beacon of hope and inspiration for women across the Pacific.
The women filmed were gifted their own videos, to use in their own publicity. To discover all 49 SHE LEADS videos in the series, view them at pacifictradeinvest.
In our series (click through from the links below) we the phenomenal women featured and hear their stories. Each is paving the way in business and laying down new pathways for others to follow.
Anne Tierney
Muri Environment Care,
Cook Islands
Muri Environment Care project manager Anne Tierney is responsible to activating the community in the care and restoration of Muri Lagoon, after it was declared a national disaster in 2015, when large patches of algae darkened the crystal-clear waters that locals and tourists loved swimming in.
Lisha Sablan
Designer, Samoa
Lisa Sablan runs the family’s retail store Janet’s with her brother, Christopher as well as working as Lead Designer for various brands, as well as Creative Director. A self-taught graphic designer, Sablan’s design philosophy revolves around a harmonious blend of cultural creativity, functionality and meticulous attention to detail.
Audrey Dang
Photographer,
New Caledonia
Audrey Dang is a Caledonian photographer based in Nouméa. She joined networks and ended up finding her niche, photographing the communities and culture of New Caledonia. In 2024, she was selected by the government to join the delegation of artists representing New Caledonia at the Pacific Arts Festival in Hawaii
Davina Hosking-Ashford
Rarotonga Business Hub,
Cook Islands
In 2019, Davina Hosking-Ashford became the managing director of Socially Conscious Outsourcing in Rarotonga, which offers accounting services to businesses in New Zealand. The company employs young Cook Islands people in accounting roles, while fully funding their remote study at Massey University in New Zealand. This allows students to gain degrees in business, accounting or finance, without leaving their island home.
Kilisitina Fehoko
Artist, Tonga
Kilisitina Fehoko handmakes miniature figures using natural materials like palm nuts and tapa cloth and raffia fibres. the figures usually make up charming nativity scenes that Fehoko sells so successfully through her business, Fehoko Art Studio in Nukuʻalofa,
Henilietta Suliana & Finau Afeaki
Suliana’s Dance Academy, Tonga
Henilietta Suliana Wolfgramm-Afeaki founded Suliana’s Dance Academy, teaching traditional Polynesian dance in the Kingdom of Tonga. Now daughter Finau Afeaki has joined her as co-director to help keep the tradition of Polynesian dance alive.
Sagufta Janif
Women in Tech Fiji
Sagufta Janif is Country Director for Women in Tech Fiji, an organisation that is part of a global movement to empower 5 million women and girls in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) by 2030. It has just launched the FoundHer Program, Fiji’s first women-focused startup incubator and investor training initiative, designed to strengthen women innovators and entrepreneurs.
Oonagh Browne
Weave Cacao
In 2022, Browne co-founded Weave Cacao, establishing an ethical cacao business and Queen Emma Chocolate Factory in Papua New Guinea. that supports the growers, makers, and communities behind each bean, creating chocolate that supports livelihoods as much as it delights the palate.
This blend of ethics, environmental care, and human connection gives the chocolate a deeper resonance; it does good while tasting delicious.
Elvinah Supisi Warahiru
SPBD Microfinance
Elvinah Supisi Warahiru of the Solomon Islands dreamed of starting a printing and tailoring business, but lacked the equipment and financial support. A loan through SPBD Microfinance Solomon Islands enabled her to purchase printing machine, fabrics, materials for business cards and banners, and an electric sewing machine. Now her thriving business supports her family.
“I want to show my children that someone like me can lead, learn, and create a better future,” she says. McCarthy concurs: “Together, we are proving that when women have access to the right resources, they can uplift not only their families but entire communities.”
Nicole Isifu
AgBook and AgFutures
AgBook’s owner and Managing Director, Nicole Isifu is a committed young woman inspired to challenge existing farming practices and drive an increase in youth participation in the agriculture sector as entrepreneurs rather than labourers.
“Youth are so important to the future of Papua New Guinea,” says Isifu. “Farmers are aging, and youth are currently not interested. Yet, the nation imports so much of what can be produced ourselves and has the fastest growing agriculture market in the world at our doorstep.”
Isifu provides online training courses and tutorials, especially for rural women, including one on soap-making. Other online AgBook courses include ‘Basics of a Farming Business’ and ‘Farming for Profit’. They all aim to improve the profitability of farms and help people enjoy better lives.
Eirububwin Tréannah Dabwido
Nauru Financial Literacy program
Eirububwin Tréannah Dabwido works to improve financial literacy for women in Nauru, establishing workshops covering financial literacy, business budgeting and investment readiness.
“I really enjoy serving my community, giving back and being part of a community that empowers through opportunities and the space to grow,” she says. “My dad always told me that leadership should not be viewed as a burden, it about giving back and serving.
“This program is about giving Nauru women the confidence and practical tools to take charge of their finances, grow their businesses and support one another. By the end of the program, local female entrepreneurs will have the skills, resources and networks they need to succeed.”
Tuna Likiliki
Shipping chief executive
Tonga
Training Tongan women for the captain’s chair, Tuna Likiliki is making waves as a woman at the helm of a Tongan shipping company. Shipping is a male-dominated field in the Pacific Islands, as it is in many parts of the world, but the company Likiliki runs has a history of strong female leadership. Tōfā Ramsay Shipping was run by Likiliki’s mother and grandmother before her.
“Women have been leading since my grandmother. Everybody knows my grandfather, he was a politician and the face of the company but it was my grandmother who did all the groundwork and made sure that there was something to pass on to the next generation,” Likiliki says. Read more.
Ana Tupou Pānuve
Business owner
Tonga
The delight of tropical gardening – both edible and ornamental – is what drives Ana Tupou Pānuve’s Tongan-based business, Bunny’s Backyard, as well as introducing the love of plants and planting to young children.
“What the company does is encapsulated in its name. Bunny’s Backyard is all to do with the things that we do in our backyard,” says Pānuve, “like what we plant in our backyard, what we can grow in our backyard, and what we do together with our family in the backyard.
Pānuve has introduced new initiatives like Plant and Earn, where children earn money for every seed sown and plant transplanted. Read more.
Christiane Waneissi
Fashion designer
Lifou Island
Christiane Waneissi’s (pictured above, far left) work as an Indigenous fashion designer has received international recognition since she launched in 2020, including staging a runway show at Paname Social in Auckland, as the opening event of the 2025 New Caledonia Season in New Zealand.
“When I started the digital business in 2020, I had only two Kanak seamstresses from New Caledonia. Two years later I added seamstresses and artisans from Tahiti, and basket weavers from Fiji, Vanuatu and Samoa.” She has an international goal after she attended the second edition of the Creative Pacific Foundation Event in Utah in 2024 and displayed her “Lapita collection”. She then went to Canada to attend five months sewing and tailoring training in Quebec. “I have the ambition to collaborate with First Nations designers and retailers in Canada,” she says. Read More.
Sylvie Salanoa
Co-founder & CEO
Samoa
Sylvie Prudente created and runs Mailelani, a soap company with her husband Kiti. At first, the couple made one unscented coconut oil soap. They now sell eight different soaps and an extensive range of body lotions, scrubs, massage oils, and other skincare products. All their products contains scents of Samoa, using frangipani, papaya, moso’oi (ylang ylang), vanilla, and cocoa to perfume their products. Sylvie says she’s usually the one who comes up with the ideas, but it’s her husband who turns them into reality. Read more.
Kate Vallabh
Operations manager
Tonga
Kate Vallabh is operations manager for Cowley Bakery, the family-run business where her late father Alfred also worked and where she now works alongside her mother, Atiu, brother Francis, and sister Aretha.
It took a dozen years for Vallabh to work her way up into her role as operations manager. “I remember moving back here in 2012 and asking my father if I could come and work for him. I thought being the boss’s daughter I would end up sitting in the office or somewhere in administration but he said, ‘Well, you can go down and start with slicing bread’. So I started with slicing bread and I’ve packed burgers, I’ve been on the production floor, I’ve served customers in the shop. At the time, I didn’t appreciate it, but now I see that it was probably the greatest gift that he gave us was to know and understand every aspect of our business and to appreciate the job that we do, and appreciate our customers.” Read more.
Ellena Tavioni
Founder & Designer
Cook Islands
Ellena Tavioni designs and produces the TAV range, a fashion line that features traditional motifs and modern elements related to the Pacific people. All designs are carved onto boards created by the Tavioni family artists, which are then used for block printing, painting and dip dyeing, all done by hand, using various fabric paints and techniques on natural fibres of cotton, silk and linen plus lycra and rayon.
“TAV is very influenced by our environment and our traditional motifs, not only from the Cook Islands, but from around the Pacific.”
The creation of TAV was not easy. “It’s been a really difficult journey from the beginning” says Tavioni, “now it seems easy, but we have to be on top of it, because anything can happen. It’s taken 40 years to get here. Read more.
Louisa Castledine
Entrepreneur
Cook Islands
Louisa Castledine created and runs Ocean Toa, a company offering turtle and eagle ray encounters among coral reefs teeming with fish. Her business has three pillars – the marine tours offered by Ocean Toa help fund Ocean Tamariki, which gives back to the community, and Ocean Tupuna – a platform to preserve the natural environment.
Returning home after living in Aotearoa, Castledine discovered many local children were disconnected from the sea, which had been her classroom when she was growing up.
“To be able to connect our local children back to their original roots is really the heart behind Ocean Tamariki,” she says. “The program offers free adventures and water safety courses for Rarotongan children. It also teaches local youth how to fish (but only take what they need) and aims to help grow young people who will be advocates for the ocean in years to come. Read more.
Filoi Eneliko
Rugby Coach
Filoi Eneliko is the head of Lakapi Samoa Women’s Academy, teaching high-level rugby skills to local women. Last year, she also started as an assistant coach for Australia’s Brumbies Super Rugby women’s team. Eneliko says helping players to become better individually and as a team is her passion. While she has learned a lot since she began coaching in 2013, she also has the hands-on experience to back up her tactical knowledge. “I started playing sports when I was young with a dream that one day I will represent Samoa. I have represented Samoa in athletics, rugby for both Sevens and 15s, and touch rugby. I represented Samoa in five Pacific Games and two World Cups. Read more.
Raphaëlle Danis
De-pollutes shipwrecks
New Caledonia
Raphaëlle Danis is an engineer and oceanographer based in Nouméa, New Caledonia. Danis has a master’s degree in oceanography from Marseille. She moved to New Caledonia to work in a six-month internship. “I worked with scientists here and I decided to stay in New Caledonia.” Danis is CEO of a company that specialises in welding, making high-quality products like stainless steel piping systems for mining and shipping but also co-founded the philanthropic start-up, ‘Thanks for Her’, which is researching the de-polluting of submarine wrecks. Read more.
Joyana Finch
Mechatronics Engineer
Cook Islands
Mechatronics engineer and children’s book author, Joyana Finch from the Cook Islands has a mission: to make science and technology accessible to everyone – including children. In 2011, Finch made history by becoming the first Pacific Island woman to gain a Mechatronics Engineering degree, when she graduated with honours from Auckland University. Mechatronics engineering is a multifaceted field, combining mechanical, electronic, computer, and software engineering. Read more.
Alanna Smith
Te Ipukarea Society
Cook Islands
Being an advocate for nature as an Indigenous woman is at the heart of Alanna Matamaru Smith’s work as director of the Te Ipukarea Society. This represents the apogee of her cultural journey, combining traditional and scientific environmental knowledge. The society is an important, effective and influential conservation organisation in the Cook Islands and it has been almost a decade since Smith took the helm. Ipukarea translates as ‘our heritage’, and Smith is tasked with helping ensure her islands’ natural heritage is carefully managed for future generations. Read more.
Luna-Rossa Lomitusi-Ape
Electrical engineer and beekeeper
Samoa
Getting stung 20 times a day didn’t put Luna-Rossa Lomitusi-Ape off fulfilling her dream of creating a beekeeping business in Samoa. The 24-year-old already had a career as an electrical engineer before she launched her beekeeping business, Pollinate Samoa. At first, she doubted how realistic her beekeeping dream was and whether it would ever bring in pots of honey, or money.
“Before I first put on a suit and interacted with bees, I thought will it be worth it? Two years later, I’ve got beehives and I’ve got honey harvesting in the next two weeks,” she says. Read more.
Eiko ‘Ahokava
Fashion designer
Tonga
Tongan designer Eiko ‘Ahokava ran a business baking beautiful cakes before deciding to put her taste for decoration into fashion. Six years ago, ‘Ahokava launched her own clothing label in Tonga, called Eiko-San. Using the internet to research, she taught herself how to create fabric prints and clothing designs that suit Tongan women and fashion lovers around the world. ‘Ahokava incorporates Tongan kupesi motifs into contemporary fabric patterns and carefully chooses colours that give her clothing range a stylish Pasifika vibe. Read more.
Sarah Hébert
Environmentalist and Kite-Sailor
New Caledonia
Professional board- and kite-sailor, blogger, film-maker, journalist and author, Sarah Hébert’s life is one of adventure. She studied sports science in France and became a boardsailing racer, winning French and European titles. By 22, Hébert had become part of a French elite athletes’ program. At a regular physical check-up it was found she needed a defibrillator device inside her pectoral muscle. Doctors told her she’d never to able to sail at the elite level again. So she decided to launch a new career as a professional sailor of big boats. But first she decided to cross the Atlantic on her windsurfing board in part “to show people that you can always adapt”. Read more.
Fuimona Sarona Ponifasio
Lawyer and farmer
Samoa
A practising lawyer, she runs a farm with her husband, a beef rancher on traditional family land, and is also President of SWAG – the Samoan Women’s Association of Growers. Through SWAG, she is busy working to promote and expand a sustainable Samoan sector for women growers and farmers of all kinds of produce. The farm she runs is one her parents used to own. “It’s where my father’s village is located, in Salani. It’s predominantly a cattle farm, but we also have mixed crops and also aquaculture, tilapia farm there.” Read more.
See more about the project and discover all 49 SHE LEADS videos in the series at pacifictradeinvest.
