Keynote speakers

O le ala i le pule o le tautua. In order to lead one must serve.

Folasāitu Professor Julia Ioane is a Samoan New Zealand clinical psychologist and academic whose work has significantly shaped the fields of youth justice, childhood trauma, and Pasifika mental health. Born in NZ to Samoan parents and raised in Ōtara, South Auckland, she was fortunate to grow up connected to her cultural heritage and community. She holds the chiefly title Folasāitu from the village of Fasito’outa, with ancestral ties to Leauva’a and Lotofaga.

Across her career, she has advocated for culturally grounded psychological practice, ensuring that Pasifika voices, experiences, and healing traditions are valued in mental health. Her research and publications are predominantly in the area of justice with a focus on children and youth, violent and sexual offending, often drawing on Indigenous (Pasifika) knowledge and methodologies. As a clinical psychologist, she provides assessment and therapy to children, young people and their families in care and protection and youth justice in NZ and, recently, Australia. She has also worked in Samoa as a consultant psychologist to the judiciary. She sits on the NZ Parole Board and Health Disciplinary Tribunal, alongside other governance and advisory roles.

Julia teaches in the Massey University clinical psychology programme and supervises justice and mental-health related research. In 2024, she was celebrated as the world’s first Pacific professor of clinical psychology, an achievement honoured in Ōtara—her home community—highlighting her dedication to bringing academic success back to the people who shaped her.