Meet The Team
Helenā Kaho
Helenā Kaho is a facilitator, lawyer, mediator, adjudicator, researcher, and community practitioner whose work bridges trauma-informed practice, cultural competency, and relational leadership. She designs and delivers training that weaves Pacific Indigenous knowledge with contemporary mediation and peacebuilding, supporting individuals and communities to navigate conflict with dignity, empathy, and care.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Laws (Honours), and a Master of Laws (Honours) from the University of Auckland, where she previously lectured in law. Beginning her legal career in the Cook Islands, she now serves as a tribunal member, specialising in culturally responsive conflict resolution that honours both legal integrity and Pacific values of respect, connection, and care. Her academic and professional experience inform her work with HIVA, where she brings law, culture, and healing together through restorative practice..
HIVA was born from years of shared work, reflection, and community engagement by co-founders and Helenā Kaho. Both had spent decades working in education, law, and peacebuilding — often within systems that struggled to understand the cultural dimensions of conflict. Through their experiences in mediation rooms, classrooms, and village spaces across the Pacific, they saw a clear need for something different: a way of restoring relationships that honored both cultural wisdom and contemporary practice.
Their conversations often returned to the concept of vā — the relational space between people — and how its neglect led to disconnection and harm. Out of this shared vision, HIVA emerged as a space to restore and protect the vā through dialogue, empathy, and understanding.
This foundation became the heart of our vision — to restore peace by restoring relationship — and shaped our approach, which blends Indigenous knowledge and modern peacebuilding tools. From these beginnings, HIVA has grown into a movement dedicated to nurturing connection, healing, and transformation wherever conflict arises.
We began with a shared concern — that many systems of conflict resolution were missing the most important element: relationship. Too often, people were being processed through legal, educational, or workplace frameworks that focused on rules and outcomes, not on the human connections at the heart of every conflict. We saw communities carrying unspoken pain, schools struggling with disconnection, and workplaces where misunderstanding turned into mistrust.
In the Pacific, we are taught that peace is not the absence of conflict but the care of the vā — the relational space that binds us. When the vā is neglected, relationships fracture; when it is nurtured, people heal.
HIVA emerged as our response — a space designed to bring cultural intelligence, empathy, and relational practice back into conflict resolution. We created a framework that blends Indigenous values with modern mediation and restorative tools, enabling individuals and institutions to move from reaction to restoration.
Our solution is simple yet transformative: restore the vā, and you restore peace.
Let’s Work Together
Partner with us to navigate complex disputes with Pacific-informed processes that honour relationships, restore trust, and support lasting resolution.
