Meet Jaime

I grew up in the Waikato, in the small town of Te Aroha, where I spent most of my childhood, except for a few years living in Papamoa.  I first learned NZSL as a teenager, out of interest, attending a night class when I was studying in Invercargill. From there I become a volunteer communicator and got involved in Deaf sports, moving back to the Waikato. I meet my Deaf husband in the community and we married 15 years ago. We have three hearing children, all sports mad boys, which suits us well as Deaf sports have always been a big part of our life. While working in insurance, I started teaching NZSL night classes, as I was keen to move into a role that involved NZSL. This was around 10 years ago and led to me completing the NZSL tutor qualification at Victoria University of Wellington in 2016. At this time I had started working as an employment specialist for the Deaf, while still teaching NZSL night classes. Upon getting my qualification, I left my day job and co-founded Merge NZ, a business that promotes and teaches NZSL across Aotearoa. It was a great achievement and myself and my Deaf business partner created New Zealand's first online NZSL learning course and built a successful company that is still going strong today. In 2020 after completing the Bachelor in NZSL-English interpreting at Auckland University of Technology, which had long been a goal of mine, I decided to leave Merge NZ and work full time as a NZSL interpreter. In 2022, I returned to AUT and completed two additional papers in Legal interpreting. I currently work in a range of settings, including the NZ Relay, education, medical, politics, events and everything in between!