After completing secondary school in Australia, she was trained as a nurse at Epworth Hospital in Melbourne.
She encountered resistance, including from female voters who told her that politics should rightly be left to men.
[1] There were no political parties in Nauru; all members of Parliament sat as independents, constituting informal coalitions.
[2] She joined President Hammer DeRoburt's parliamentary majority, and he appointed her minister, from December 1986 until the government was brought down upon losing the confidence of Parliament in August 1989.
[1] She founded the People's Movement Association to oppose what she saw as wasteful public spending by President Bernard Dowiyogo's government.