Meet the team

Jodie Peterson | Student Equity and Wellbeing Manager

Jodie has recently joined the team as Acting Student Equity and Wellbeing Manager, while Carley Fletcher is on parental leave. She has an extensive background working with people who experience physical and neuro diversities through both medical and educational contexts and is passionate about equitable and inclusive education. Having previously worked as a Nurse in Acute Care, Public Health and Mental Health settings, along with six years of classroom teaching experience and additional roles as team leader and school-wide curriculum leader for Digital & Collaborative teaching, she brings an extensive and wide range of expertise to the team. As manager, her focus is to steer the team's key initiatives, while also cementing relationships across the University to ensure there's an increased awareness around the wellbeing and equity needs of students.

Thibaut (Tee) Bouttier-Esprit | Health Promotion Adviser

Born and raised in New Caledonia, Tee is a Health Promotion Adviser at the University of Auckland. With a degree in health practice (from the University), Tee’s expertise primarily lies in community health, sexual harm prevention, addiction, and qualitative health research. Tee advocates for health promotion through harm reduction, encouraging individuals to engage in behaviours that resonate with them, provided they understand and accept the associated risks, are content with them, and ensure their actions do not harm others.

Professionally, Tee is often engaged in networking with various internal and external stakeholders, composing research or evaluation reports, and overseeing events and workshops. Beyond his professional duties, Tee enjoys reading fantasy novels, playing video games, and occasionally contributing to the University’s Health Promotion postgraduate courses. 

Sonja Epskamp | Health Promotion Adviser

Sonja grew up in the stunning region of Te Tai Tokerau and still calls it home. A passionate health promoter, she has industry experience in Public Health and Health Promotion, with a focus on healthy housing, equity, youth health, and food insecurity. Sonja is both a recent student and recent lecturer, which gives her a unique perspective of both sides of the tertiary experience, which helps inform the design of tertiary health promotion initiatives. 

As Health Promotion Adviser, Sonja works alongside University of Auckland students and departments to design and implement health promotion initiatives which benefit students. The focus of these initiatives are on harm reduction and removing barriers to positive health outcomes.

Shivani Kershaw | Health Promotion Adviser

Born and raised in the North Shore of Tāmaki Makaurau, Shivani also gets to call Fiji, India, and the United Kingdom her homes. Shivani comes from a Developmental Psychology and Population Health Nutrition background and has previously worked in the community with a focus on drug harm prevention, mental health research and advocacy. Shivani's primary goal is to bring lived experience into her mahi and wider tertiary health promotion initiatives.

Included in her Health Promotion Adviser mahi, Shivani is the Operational lead in supporting the University's accreditation of the Healthy Campus certification. Shivani coordinates the Steering Committee to set the strategic goals of the Healthy Campus Programme, implements events and activities within the Healthy Campus vision, and collaborates with different departments and cohorts of students to bring Healthy Campus to life. Visit the Healthy Campus page to to find out more and get involved.

The Wellbeing and Equity teams now employ a group of Wellbeing and Equity Student Ambassadors, more commonly known as WESA's. Our Student Ambassadors are passionate and engaged students who support our teams in the planning and implementation of our projects and initiatives, assist in delivering messages and trainings to the University community and are valued representatives of the student voice. You will often see their friendly faces at events and activations around campus throughout the year!