It was the issue no one could get their hands on. Copies of the Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori themed issue flew off the stands, and the kōrero reached corners of the motu that a Dunedin-based publication doesn’t usually touch. This year, Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori wasn’t just celebrated, it was redefined – pushing the boundaries of visibility, celebration, and mana-enhancing Māori magic.
At the puku of that mahi were four wāhine serving Brown Brilliance in every shade: a mic-dropper who never misses a beat, a geneticist rewriting the code, a songbird who schools while she soars, and a connector who makes worlds collide. Distinct in their journeys but bound by a shared vision, together they’re unshakable. Back by popular demand, bringing all their brilliance with them. It’s time to meet them properly.
Jessie-Jade Witeri
Āti Ue, Ngāti Ngararanui, Ngāti Ngahere, Te Whakatōhea
Authored Champion One Day, Crumbling the Next and From Vegas to the Valley – A Taste of Mita
Where better to start than with the (Roto) Vegas-born, unapologetic powerhouse herself – Jessie-Jade Witeri, impossible to miss across those pages. Sassy, sharp, and unafraid to stir, Jess is a voice that cuts through the noise, a presence that commands attention, and a creative force who never misses a beat.
Jessie’s pen hit the page with a wero to the University of Otago – a straight-up challenge to Western institutions and the way their business-first logic sidelines communities in favour of profit. The piece didn’t just call out inequity; it carved out space for a Māori worldview to stand front and centre. That’s Jessie all over: kicking doors down, dragging truth to the centre of the room, and daring anyone to look away.
But Jessie wasn’t always loud. “I was a shy little shit,” she laughs. Orphaned at 13, she was raised by a village: siblings, aunties, cousins, the usual. Her sisters taught her compassion; her brothers taught her to stand her ground. Karaoke shows in the lounge, haka on the school field, Missy Elliot raps she swears she doesn’t remember – it was all training for the stage she didn’t know she’d one day command.
By high school, Jessie was already learning how to shapeshift to fit in. “I’d put on an act, even pretend to be another person, just to belong,” she recalls. That girl feels worlds away now. The Jessie of today doesn’t dilute, bend herself small, or whisper. She found her voice – and once it showed up, it didn’t shut up.
The first time Jessie got in trouble for speaking up? “Every time,” she says. Whānau shaped her, held her, and loved her – but some things got swept under the whāriki, and she wasn’t about to let silence do the heavy lifting. The bluntness people know her for now was forged back then, a promise to herself that her own kids would never grow up having to swallow their truths.
School cracked the mic wide open. A Year 3 teacher, Mrs Elsemore, was the first to clock her spark, holding up Jessie’s wild holiday story – turtles, Rarotonga, pure imagination – as something worth celebrating. “I’ll never forget how she made me feel.” That moment stuck: words could move people. By high school, the applause got louder. Jessie walked onto a competitive speech stage stacked with head boys, head girls, and prefects, armed with cue cards and polish. But Jessie? She walked on with nothing but audacity. “I improvised the whole thing,” she laughs. And she won. A trophy bigger than the rugby boys’ cups, her name carved into it forever. “Big win for the inner child,” she says. “It still makes me smile.” One day, she was pretending to fit in. The next, she was proving she belonged on any stage, anywhere – no cue cards required.
“My mahi chooses me.” She says it quietly, not as a boast but as a truth. From spoken word ovations at the Sydney Opera House – one of the largest stages in the world – to grassroots advocacy for Māori mums through the action group Hine Ki Te Wheiao, Jessie doesn’t separate her worlds. Advocacy feeds her creativity, creativity fuels her activism, and activism anchors her mahi. Even in her role as Advocacy Lead for Ki Tua o Matariki, she doesn’t force the merge; it happens naturally. Reports and funding proposals sit alongside murals and podcasts, all different vessels carrying the same kaupapa. Every platform becomes an opportunity and a wero. Jessie’s brilliance isn’t in speaking the loudest – it’s in making sure her words carry, land, and stay.
Surprisingly, if you ask Jessie what her strongest tool is, she won’t say her voice, but her memory. “I can hold on to kōrero and repeat it back like a Kākā,” she laughs. But anyone who’s been in the room with her knows it’s more than mere recall. It’s the way she listens, threads stories together, and knows exactly when to land her words. “This makes me dangerous in a public setting, and adds a bit more ink to my pen.”
Outspoken is a label people throw around, but Jessie doesn’t take offence. Tone tells her everything; friends say it with aroha, critics say it with fear. Either way, she owns it. If her kōrero makes someone uncomfortable, it’s because it needed to. Her measure of success isn’t trophies or titles, but Tā Mason Durie’s framework: whānau first, then her mental, spiritual, and physical wellbeing. If her tamariki and partner are thriving, she’s thriving. If her own wairua is steady, then she knows her mahi can carry others too. In every sense, it is a brilliance that is lived, not performed.
Despite an ability to roar like wildfire, Jessie’s got a softer, playful side – like embers in a campfire. She loves Tame Iti’s words, gets unreasonably excited about skincare rituals, and finds peace in guilty-pleasure retail therapy. Cry in front of her, and odds are she’ll cry too. Call out the Minister of Health at a national conference, and she’ll do that just as easily. Duality embodied. Day-to-day creativity doesn’t always look like big stages or magazine spreads, though. Sometimes it’s writing reports, sometimes spoken word, sometimes just letting her tamariki remind her what joy looks like. Side projects stack up, from podcast hosting to running kapa haka socials, but they’re never vanity projects. Each is another outlet for kaupapa.
Jessie jokes about bringing a “bitchy lil’ pōtiki vibe” to the Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori issue, but her voice was anything but small. If anything, it amplified the whole kaupapa; dragging where dragging was due, celebrating where celebration was overdue. For Jess, the horizon is wide open. More writing is a given, but so is experimenting with new ways of storytelling – from theatre to TV, and anything else that lets her take up space unapologetically. She laughs about one day creating a “hot brown girl activist” series, but beneath the joke is a serious intent of showing that Māori brilliance doesn’t just fit in the box, it remakes the box.
Jessie defines Brown Brilliance with a grin: “It looks like confidence, smells like caramel cookies and a hint of audacity, and talks like it owns the mic.” But her real message for wāhine Māori is straight to the point – stop tripping. “You’ve wasted too much time worrying about what others think. Spoiler: they’re not even thinking about you. Back yourself.”
If Jessie’s past is proof of anything, it’s that she’ll keep turning every platform into a wero – and she’ll do it with the kind of mana, bite, and brilliance that refuses to be ignored.
Gemella Reynolds-Hatem
Ngāi Tahu: Ngāi Tūāhuriri, Ngāti Waewae, Ngāti Hāteatea
Authored Flaunt Your Fashion
If Jessie was the firestarter of the issue, then Gemella Reynolds-Hatem was its steady flame, equal parts scientist and storyteller, brains and heart. A Master’s student in Genetics with a flair for mahi toi, she’s rewriting the code not just in labs and libraries, but in the way whakapapa, research, and advocacy can braid together. Scholarship-winning, trend-setting, and never afraid to speak up, Gemella is the People’s Princess of kaupapa Māori academia – blending brilliance, beauty, and boldness with ease.
That mix didn’t come from nowhere. Gemella grew up between Māngere, Botany, and her marae in Ōtautahi, moving through worlds that didn’t always make space for her, learning quickly how differences can sting – and how whakapapa, whānau, and books could soften the edges. Being brilliant was never about outshining others; it was about carrying the weight of those who couldn’t finish school and turning survival into momentum.
University tested that resilience. Gemella began in First Year Health Science, failed her first semester, and carried the burden of tragic losses that could have stopped her studies altogether, including the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019. Instead, the setback gave her clarity. With the support of mentors and the pull of her own instincts, she returned to Genetics and paired it with a major in Indigenous Development. It wasn’t the plan, but it felt right – a way to let both worlds speak at once rather than compete for space.
The spark had come earlier, in Year 11. Sitting in Miss Denny’s biology class, the topic turned to genetics. For most students, it was just another chapter. For Gemella, it was a revelation. Whakapapa wasn’t only the stories passed on at the marae: it was also written in cells, a thread carried in blood and bone. Genetics became another language for belonging, another way of saying that connection endures. That shift continues to shape her mahi today. Now a recipient of the Māori Cancer Researcher Awards 2024, her Master’s research focuses on improving outcomes for Ngāi Tahu whānau affected by CDH1 cancer. It is academic and personal; technical and deeply human. For Gemella, science and whakapapa are inseparable.
With her love for science, creativity too has travelled alongside her, even if at times it was pushed aside in favour of labs or lecture halls. As a child, she filled sketchbooks and staged her first art exhibition before pressing pause to make space for academics. Only recently, during her Master’s, she found herself pulled back to mahi toi – drawing, painting, and learning under artists like Heramaahina Eketone at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. It felt less like a new pursuit and more like a homecoming, reclaiming a part of herself she had left waiting. That return to creativity is also a return to balance. Wednesdays are her favourite day of the week: te reo Māori classes, hui, time in the library, and mahi toi all woven into one rhythm. On the other hand, weekends are for whānau, mahi with her rangatahi every Saturday, visiting the archives, second-hand bookshops, and, of course, the gym.
Where some see tension between academia and artistry, Gemella sees flow. Genetics teaches her about whakapapa in one register; art allows her to tell those same stories in another. Both are acts of advocacy, both are forms of survival. Her voice – whether in research, wānanga, or whānau spaces – is steady, persuasive, and deeply her own.
When you get to know her, it is evident that her research isn’t about pursuing science for the sake of it. It is about protection, healing, and carrying her people forward. In the lab, that means testing specific drugs, like capivasertib and fulvestrant, to see if they can halt tumour growth in CHD1 cancer models. But her mahi doesn’t stop when the coat and goggles come off. Outside the lab, she’s running wānanga with her whānau at Tuahiwi, weaving tikanga and cultural practices into spaces where people can openly speak their mamae. It’s a model of research that’s unapologetically Māori in its foundations. Her goal is simple: to make the health system serve Māori better, and to build pathways where Indigenous knowledge and cutting-edge science move together.
Carrying that duality has its weight, though. Standing out makes you visible, and visibility invites critique. Tall poppy syndrome, Gemella says, is a familiar shadow, but perspective is her shield. With whakapapa that ties her to both Te Waipounamu, Syria and Lebanon, she holds stories of tīpuna who faced unimaginable hardship. Measured against that, the challenges of academia are small – not insignificant, but fuel for her determination rather than barriers to her path. And at the heart of it all is advocacy. “It was never something I had to learn; it’s inherited,” she explains. Whether she’s speaking in academic forums, standing with whānau, or navigating the politics of science, her voice has always been steady, and her presence unmistakable.
Brilliance for Gemella isn’t about titles or prestige. Why would it be, when her whakapapa has already taught her that survival, resilience, and aroha are the highest forms of success? As well as holding, she creates space where her whānau feel seen, and where the next generation can inherit systems that serve them. Whether in the lab, at the marae, or in the pages of her own journals, she carries both microscope and megaphone – unshakable, grounded, and endlessly giving.
Gemella might laugh off the nickname “the People’s Princess” – but it fits. At every step, her brilliance belongs as much to her people as it does to her. And where Gemella builds systems that serve, Tenaya fills them with sound.
Tenaya Brown
Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti ki Ūawa
Authored From Ūawa to the Unknown: Six Weeks Across Taiwan
A coastie girl turned campus’ ultimate big sister, Tenaya doesn’t just step into a room – she rolls in like the tide. There’s the pull of her presence, the tug of her voice, and the undercurrent of her wairua that leaves no one untouched. But like the ocean she grew up beside, Tenaya has known the low tide too: the drag of burnout, the sharp rocks of tall poppy cuts, the moments where the current threatened to pull her under. And still, she surfaces every time.
Tenaya’s voice first carried across campus as a student, equal parts powerhouse and protector. During her student days, she sat as an Officer on Te Rito and the Aka Mātaamua (Postgraduate Officer) for Ngā Tauira o Te Kete Aronui. Since then, she has served as Kaiāwhina, first for the Māori Centre before stepping up as Kaiāwhina Māori for the wider Division of Humanities – roles that made her a tide in constant motion, pulling people in, holding them steady, and reminding them why they weren’t navigating those waters alone.
Now fresh from completing her Master’s in Teaching and stepping into the classroom as a kaiako, she’s still that same force of nature. Only now, she flows into tamariki futures – a lesson isn’t just curriculum, but preparing the next wave of rangatahi to move with strength. But every tide has a beginning. For Tenaya, it started on the East Coast between Gisborne and Tolaga Bay, before the current carried her inland to Hamilton, where her mum’s mahi took root and Tenaya’s own creativity began to bloom – kapa haka, singing, performing – always drawn to the stage. Home for her has never been “just one place” but a constellation of them.
Music has always been more than a passion for Tenaya, and today it constitutes the larger part of her identity. She studied it, graduated in it, and now passes it on by teaching others to sing – shaping voices with the same care that whānau and teachers once poured into her. But her vision stretches beyond the classroom. Tenaya dreams of facilitating vocal therapy through a Māori lens and using song as a tool for healing. To guide the use of her voice is a responsibility, something she can trace back to the rite of passage all eldest daughters travel through. In the background of childhood photos, Tenaya was “playing house, doing the dishes while the adults got drunk.” Growing up was abundant in the “little joys”, like her dad buying her an MP3 Walkman and S Club 7 CDs. Between the weight of responsibility and those sparks of joy, Tenaya learned early what it meant to hold both.
Talking to Tenaya about her journey, it is evident that family is the defining current, always pulling her back to herself. Her dad was the source of music and joy – the one who set the bar for what love should feel like. “Without my dad, I wouldn’t know what real love is,” she says. On the other hand, she says her mum is the rock that keeps her in check: “I get my grounding from her.” Between her parents’ lessons, Tenaya was set up for success – not in a straight line, but in a way that allowed her to explore, adapt, and gather the tools she needed along the way. Her journey has never been about prestige, but preparing herself to serve the people around her.
Tenaya didn’t leap straight into university. At 18, Tenaya trained in massage therapy while quietly wondering if midwifery might be her calling. Before she ever set foot in an Otago University lecture theatre, she had also earned a Kāwai Raupapa Certificate in Māori indigenous art from Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, sharing that she “didn’t even do it for the certificate,” but just to immerse herself in mahi toi. Music, though, was the current she couldn’t ignore. Tenaya had applied for a Bachelor of Music in secret, sending off her audition tape without telling a soul at home. Her parents only found out at a family celebration once her place was secured. “My mum was initially upset,” she admits, “but I explained that I needed to take ownership of my life. Doing what I loved ended up making my parents proud.”
And who could have known that one decision – to follow her voice – would explode into so many other opportunities. She was awarded a Te Kāika Housing Scholarship in her first year of study, lifting some of the financial pressure and letting her throw herself fully into both study and service. After completing her undergrad, Tenaya was also awarded the Ngarimu VC and 28th Māori Battalion Memorial Scholarship – an incredible honour that is awarded annually to students of Māori descent who possess characteristics similar to those of the 28th Māori Battalion soldiers. The recognition was especially poignant: Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu VC, whom the scholarship memorialises, hailed from the East Coast – the same whenua that Tenaya and her whānau call home. For Tenaya, the scholarship was more than recognition – it was a launchpad that gave her the means to pursue her Master’s in Teaching.
Her students bring with them stories, challenges, and brilliance of their own, but she meets them where they are, shaping lessons into lifelines. Beyond the school gates, her world has expanded again: she’s recently stepped into a new role as a tutor for He Waka Kōtuia, one of Dunedin’s leading kapa haka groups. Taken under the wing of the brilliant Cassidy whānau, she’s found a new home for her voice, pouring her energy into rangatahi performance and watching them grow on the same stage that helped shape her.
When asked if there was ever a moment she realised her voice was strong – whether spoken, sung, or otherwise – Tenaya doesn’t hesitate: “It wasn’t yesterday.” Confidence, she admits, is something she still wrestles with. Even now, with whānau, friends, and colleagues affirming she’s exactly where she’s meant to be, she holds herself to exacting standards. That drive comes from growing up in a female-led whānau where resilience and self-reliance were everyday lessons. It also means she can be her toughest critic – a perfectionist who pours her whole soul into her mahi, but often overlooks what she’s already achieved.
At her core, Tenaya is a Haati Ngāti girl – grounded and fierce in the way she meets life. Every opportunity, she says, is a wero. “You don’t turn your back on it, and you don’t take your eyes off it,” she says. That lesson has carried from the East Coast to the classroom, from kapa haka stages to Taiwan and back, and into the lives of the tamariki she now teaches. Her brilliance isn’t just in the power of her voice, but in the way she uses it – to steady, to guide, to uplift. Like the ocean she grew up beside, she can be calm, she can be forceful, but above all, she is constant: a presence you can trust will always return.
If Tenaya is the tide, then Te Āwhina is the bridge – steady, intentional and built to carry people across. She has always been that link between worlds: te ao Māori and te ao whānui, personal and political, activist and diplomat. Her strength isn’t in standing at one end and calling people over, but in being the span itself.
Te Āwhina-Pounamu-Waikaramihi
Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Hine, Te Hikutū, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Porou, Ngāi Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe
Authored Te Reo o Te Moana
Te Āwhina shines in the spaces where peace and conflict meet, where communities need a voice, and where leadership calls for both grace and fire. Her brilliance isn’t in being the loudest voice, but in knowing when to speak, when to listen, and how to move people forward together.
Raised as the eldest child in a whānau that expected and nurtured leadership, Te Āwhina describes herself as having been “born into succession.” Teachers, parents, and kaumātua all recognised those qualities early on, placing her in spaces where her skills could flourish. It’s clear she was born of greatness, to which she responded, “Therefore, I’m meant for greatness.” That grounding – knowing her whakapapa and who she is – has been the compass she carries into every role, from her marae to university halls, student politics to mahi for her iwi.
Te Āwhina’s advocacy first came alive on the Manu Kōrero stage – a speech competition for high school students that encourages fluency in both te reo Māori and English – when she delivered a 12-minute bilingual speech discussing Nā Wai Te Wai – Who Owns The Water? It was the first time she saw how her words could move people. Though she had really been trained for that moment her whole life. “That’s what sets Māori ahead of the game,” she reflects. “We prepare our tamariki to know who they are. It starts with you and your people.”
At university, that spark grew into flame. During a stint as a Resident Assistant at Salmond College, mentors named her future before she saw it herself: “Foreign affairs and diplomacy? That’s you.” Other opportunities came by way of a nudge from friends or whānau, but she doesn’t see that as a coincidence. “I think being authentic in who I am attracts those things into my orbit,” she says. That authenticity has carried Te Āwhina into leadership roles like Āpiha Mātauranga Māori (Cultural & Education Officer) for Te Rito in 2021, Political Representative for OUSA in 2022, and now, knee-deep into her Master’s research in Peace and Conflict Studies – where her writing, her activism, and her deep sense of justice intertwine.
Her thesis is more than an academic project; it’s a blueprint for reconciliation. Exploring how Indigenous communities navigate conflict and peace building, she positions Māori and Pacific voices within global conversations, offering lessons the world desperately needs.
Te Āwhina will tell you her pen is her sharpest tool, the place where her thoughts crystallise into action. But her presence speaks just as loudly. “A friend once told me I'm opinionated, outspoken, and calculated,” she laughs. “I know that I’m outspoken, but I’ll own that now. It’s in our blood.” Together, her presence and her pen make her both diplomat and advocate – able to speak truth into the world and bridge divides with conviction.
Still, Te Āwhina’s measures of success are disarmingly simple. Not accolades, but balance: getting enough sleep, raising her son Noa with the same grounding in identity her parents gave her, and building villages of friendship and whānau that sustain her. “Success,” she says, “is doing something you love rather than loving what you do. It’s fulfilling your purpose.”
When she joined the Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori takeover, she saw it as a chance to share knowledge that had been entrusted to her. “It came more naturally than I thought it would,” she reflects. “I was writing about things that I love. I wanted that same fire and passion I feel for our language and our Pacific connections to exude from the pages and touch others – so they might feel that same magic and inspiration.” In that space, she became a vessel for stories and histories far older than herself, honoured to carry them forward. Imposter syndrome, as it does, showed up briefly, but once she began writing, the work felt effortless. “It makes sense now why the thought of writing a thesis doesn’t scare me. I love putting thoughts to pen and making art in that way.” Her hope was pretty simple: that readers would feel more connected – Pacific and non-Pacific alike – to the ties that bind Aotearoa to the wider Pacific. For her, the written piece “only scratched the surface,” but it affirmed her role as part of an intergenerational chain of storytellers and advocates.
Looking ahead, she is working towards earning her Master’s with distinction, raising her son Noa in a richness of identity, and aims to move into foreign affairs. Beyond that? More writing and creative expression are at the top of the list. “I also need to stand at a Te Matatini one day. That’s a creative pursuit I have in my dream cards,” she says. But there’s no hurry. “One thing I’ve learned is that there’s no rush in the pursuit of your dreams. Everything happens at the right time.”
At just 25, Te Āwhina has already become a bridge in motion – strong in her own right, yet always creating pathways for others to cross. Like kahurangi pounamu, polished by generations before her, set firmly in the present, and carrying light for those still to come. In her name lies her truth – Te Āwhina, the caretaker; Pounamu, the jewel of the South; Waikaramihi, the rippling waters that touch and connect all they meet. She is the dream of her people, carried in her very name.
Gifted, Gawjus, Going Places
At the puku of the mahi and the heart of the dream remains four wāhine Māori serving Brown Brilliance in every shade: Jessie, the powerhouse whose voice never misses and always moves; Gemella, the geneticist rewriting futures and the code; Tenaya, the travelling songbird who teaches others to fly; and Te Āwhina, whose ripples bridge people, places, and purpose.
Distinct in their journeys but bound by the love for their people, together they are indestructible. Brown Brilliance isn’t just what they do – it’s who they are, and it’s only the beginning.