“When I was ready to attend university after leaving school early, I read all of the prospectuses back to front. And the university was doing everything I wanted to do. It was strong in languages, and had a great Law school, and I knew I loved Wellington,” says Thalia.
After completing her Bachelor of Laws with Honours and her Bachelor of Arts in linguistics, she recognised that her health wouldn’t allow her to go straight into a law career. After three years of youth work and tutoring at the Law School, she chose to train to become a Baptist minister. She ministered in Aotearoa for several years, then she and her husband travelled to Thailand to work with charitable organisation Partners Relief & Development.
“I have always been very aware of how people are living in other parts of the world. Prior to going to Thailand, the situation of the Rohingya people in Myanmar had been on my mind for many years. It felt good to be part of the action to support people to build their lives back after being displaced.”
Her current job is as strategy and communication lead at the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), a thinktank that measures the performance of countries at keeping their human rights promises.
“I was surprised, when I first learned about HRMI, that this stuff wasn’t being covered by the work of the United Nations. But as I’ve learned, the UN doesn’t have the political will to hold anyone to account—they have ways to report on how countries are doing, but no political will to rate it. So that’s what we do.
“In my law degree, I did a lot of public and human rights law. My honours thesis was on the Human Rights Act. So it’s been great to bring a strong background to understand these issues. My role is to help other actors to use our data in their work,” says Thalia.
Thalia credits her time at law school for making her a better and clearer thinker. “I loved law tutorials and lectures. The Socratic method was exciting—I enjoyed the debate conversations. I also tutored Māori and Pasifika law students later in my time there, and it was a huge privilege to support these students.”
She is also passionate about languages, having learned French and German before going into linguistics in her second year. She has since learned several other languages, including Thai. “I learned linguistics from Professor Paul Warren and Professor Emeritus Laurie Bauer and they were both magnificent. They were passionate and it was easy to be passionate about what they were teaching you.”
While still a student, Thalia also volunteered with the Community Law Centre, which she went on to work with again later on. She continues to work with them on the Community Law Manual, which is a guide to the law in plain English, for anybody to use.
This work is not her only involvement in publishing—she is also a published picture book author, and was an editor of award-winning children’s book website The Sapling for three years. “My degrees included a lot of literature. When I had kids, this meant I had a real critical eye on children’s books. There are a lot of books published, some are wonderful, some aren’t.
“Being on the editorial team of The Sapling was a huge honour, and a really enriching and valuable experience. Helping people find the books they need has a social justice element to it—the publishing industry is getting better, but still has huge gaps. I liked being a public voice to advocate for more diverse books.”
Thalia encourages those who want to know more about human rights across the world to check out rightstracker.org. She says that while Aotearoa has high scores, the data shows there are people missing out—Māori and Pacific people, as well as people with disabilities, and children. She also points out that the housing crisis is a human rights crisis, something recognised by the UN and HRMI.
“I feel really lucky to get to talk to dozens of people a week doing work to make the world better,” says Thalia. “I love having a direct impact on making the world more equitable for all.”