Barbara Dreaver’s mother is from Kiribati where Barbara was born and grew up on the island of Tarawa. Her father is a New Zealander and Barabara has close family in the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tonga and the Cook Islands.

Barbara has worked at Television New Zealand as a reporter for the last 19 years where she is the network’s Pacific Correspondent.

In her thirty one years of journalism she has also worked in print and radio winning numerous awards for her work including best news coverage and best TV story for the Samoa measles crisis at the Voyager Media Awards 2020.

With Cook Islands family links, I lived and worked in Rarotonga as a journalist for eight years where she co-owned a weekly newspaper.