Ngaire is the Joyce Cook Chair in Ageing Well and Professor of General Practice and Primary Health Care at the University of Auckland. She serves as the President of the New Zealand Association of Gerontology and Co-Director of the Centre for Cocreated Ageing Research, the University of Auckland.  Ngaire is a GP with a strong interest in health of older people and works with the health sector and health researchers to improve wellbeing for older people. Ngaire led the “Te Puawaitanga o Ngā Tapuwae Kia Ora Tonu, Life and Living in Advanced Age: A Cohort Study in New Zealand” (LiLACS NZ), which has produced over 80 outputs with a focus on equity, health service use, health and well-being in advanced age, and led to several intersecting projects.

Patricia is currently a research associate contracted to the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, the University of Auckland, and manages the “Arts-Based Delivery of an Innovative Model of Aged Care: Systematizing and Disseminating the Virtual Eastern Bay Villages Model of Aging in Place” research project. She combines forty years of experience in the arts, community and policy development and academic research in New Zealand, Australia, the US, and Papua New Guinea. She has extensive experience in qualitative phenomenological and arts-based research through roles in multidisciplinary research teams focused on improving education and health, specifically health outcomes for students suffering depression, violent offenders, women living with stigmatizing illness, and most recently with members of the Virtual Eastern Bay Villages, an Aging in Place initiative, based in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.

Kathy Peri has a Master’s in Health Science from the University of Otago and completed her PhD at the University of Auckland in 2010. Since then, she has been involved in numerous research projects that focus on translational research into best practice and to support organisations to implement high quality services for older people. Her research interests are centred on improving health outcomes and quality of life and care for older people residing in community and aged residential care, with a central focus on dementia. Kathy has been instrumental in introducing Cognitive Stimulation Therapy an intervention that has shown to improve cognition and quality of life for people with mild to moderate dementia into New Zealand.   

Ruth Gerzon has worked for decades promoting community development, inclusion, and social justice. In 2016 nearing retirement she decided to use her skills and networks in her home town of Whakatāne to ensure seniors had a vehicle to share their skills and support one another as they aged, so avoiding the need for services and rest homes. Using a Tāngata Whenua/Tāngata Tiriti partnership approach, she quickly gained considerable support for the idea from a cohort of both Māori and Pākehā who then set up the Virtual Eastern Bay Villages: Te Kokoru Manaakitanga (VEBV: TKM), in Whakatāne, with a focus on alleviating isolation and vulnerability among older people. Ruth was the first coordinator of the VEBV: TKM but retired from that role in 2022. However, she remains involved in two other community development organisations set up by VEBV: TKM members, the: Waka Eastern Bay, providing community transport, and Ngā Pou Herenga, the Funeral Guides Collective.

Sandra McDonald (RN, M.TchL) (Ngāti Whātua ki Kaipara, Ngāti Wai) is a registered nurse with decades of experience in clinical leadership and education. She has a particular focus on improving Māori health outcomes by strengthening the nursing workforce (Māori and non-Māori) to provide effective equity-based nursing care. Her research interest focuses on the Te Ao Māori perspective related to nursing, nursing education, and consent in aged residential care. Sandra is currently working full time on the development, implementation, and unification of the three nursing degree programmes across Te Pūkenga.