Hi, my name is Fili, and I am the new Head of Experimentation for the Accelerator Lab at the UNDP Pacific Office in Fiji. Today, I will take you on a journey on how I came to this role. Growing up in the islands, I was always gravitated towards science, something about proving facts and knowing the actual processes of how life on earth came to be, fascinated me. I was influenced by many things including my love for wetlands, the mangroves, and everything around me.

Fast track to university life, the passion became reality when I was forced to decide whether to continue my journey of the hard sciences or deviate towards Marine Science - something I was familiar with and had positive influences and memories of. Being a marine science student at the University of the South Pacific (USP) got me into the thick of things such as coral surveys, the biology of different sea creatures and crustaceans, the microbiology of shrimps, and the importance of keeping the oceans clean and healthy. It was a world of beauty and danger, but it was all worth it.

During graduation, I joined the Pacific Community’s (SPC) Geoscience, Energy and Maritime Division which was formerly known as the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) as an intern in 2013. It was my first real job at a prestigious scientific institution in the Pacific region. I was put to work right away working on SOPAC’s Geo-network.

I had no background in the Geographic Information System (GIS) and Data management and I quickly learned that everything in this business was personality, personal initiative, and listening to guidance from peers. After three months of internship, I joined the GIS unit SPC and was guided through programming and other virtual tools that SPC was working on at the time. At the end of my contract, I had an opportunity to work for a UN FAO project under the United Nations collaborative initiative Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Programme looking at land use, Collect Earth, Earth Engine and Remote Sensing, in 12 project countries. We dealt with agriculture, forestry, and other forms of land use.

As the project came to an end, I rejoined the Regional Maritime Boundaries Project of SPC where I provided updated gazetted boundaries in GIS formats to Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) for their Vessel Monitoring System under the FFA-SPC SLA project. It was a privilege to work with so many ocean practitioners from GIS Experts to Law of the Sea experts from the region.