Our Staff

Estelle Gerrett
Habilitation Team Leader
LSLS Cert. Auditory-Verbal Therapist
LSLS Cert. AVT, B.Ed (Hons), Adv Post.Grad Dip HI

Estelle qualified as a teacher in 1974 after a four-year degree course. Her first nine years were spent in the UK teaching in a primary classroom. This was followed by a promotion to Special Needs Team Leader for three years. She then taught for three years in Germany and two in Hong Kong. Following the births of her three children, one of whom is profoundly deaf, she returned to teaching with a post graduate qualification in Hearing Impairment. She then opened and, for the first three years, co-managed a Speech and Language Unit attached to a primary school in Salisbury, UK. A large, new Hearing Impaired Unit was opened in a secondary school nearby and Estelle was appointed leader there for a further four years. On arrival in NZ, she was initially employed as the Resource Manager at Kelston Deaf Education Centre and then transferred to The Hearing House where she is currently an Auditory-Verbal Therapist.

Leigh Martelli 
Audiology Team Leader 
BA, M.Aud (Hons), MNZAS, CCC

Leigh graduated in 2007 from the University of Auckland with a Masters in Audiology.  Leigh initially worked wiht adult patients in diagnostic and rehabilitative audiology in a private audiology practice.  She later also worked in paediatric audiology at Starship Children's Hospital.  Leigh joined The Hearing House in August 2010 on a part time basis and has recently accepted a full time position.

Alexandra Crosbie
LSLS Cert. Auditory-Verbal Therapist
LSLS Cert. AVT, Adv Tchg Cert, Dip HI

Alexandra has been teaching since 1992 and first specialised as a Teacher of the Deaf in 1996. She became a certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist in 2003. For the past thirteen years, she has been teaching hearing impaired children, aged 0-6 years. She came to Hearing House in September of 2004 because it was an Auditory-Verbal centre similar to The Shepherd Centre in Sydney (Australia) where she had been working for the previous five years. Alexandra enjoys seeing the positive results that can be achieved through a family-centred approach, which ensures parents and caregivers are given the necessary skills to work with their children.

Jayne Simpson
LSLS Cert. Auditory-Verbal Therapist
LSLS Cert. AVT, Dip.Teaching, B.Ed, M.Ed

Jayne has been a teacher of the deaf since 1986. She became a certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist in 2000, mentored by Christina Perigoe, PhD. She has worked for various educational facilities and Auditory-Verbal Therapy centres throughout Queensland (Australia), Christchurch and Auckland. Highlights of her career have been Centre Co-ordinator of The Hear and Say Centre in Cairns (Queensland, Australia); travelling to Auditory-Verbal centres throughout the United States and Canada on her Churchill Fellowship; and becoming the first certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist in the South Island of New Zealand.

Lydia O'Connor
LSLS Cert. Auditory-Verbal Therapist
LSLS Cert. AVT, BSLT, MNZSTA

Lydia graduated in 2006 from the University of Canterbury with a Bachelor of Speech and Language Therapy. Towards the end of her degree, she completed a three-month clinical placement at the University of Northern Iowa, USA. When Lydia returned to New Zealand, she worked as a Speech-Language Therapist for Group Special Education in the Wairarapa.  She took up the position of Auditory-Verbal Therapist at The Hearing House in August 2007, and achieved her LSLS Cert. Auditory-Verbal Therapy qualification in November 2010.

Esther Pakura
Auditory-Verbal Therapist Trainee and Preschool Teacher
B.Ed

Esther's primary involvement with The Hearing House began in 2000 when she began attending therapy with her son Matthew who has a profound hearing loss and received a cochlear implant in 2001.  Since then, two more of Esther's children have been through The Hearing House programme.  Esther joined the preschool team as a teacher in March 2010.  She is now training as part of the team of therapists to gain her LSLS Cert. AV Ed.

Kelly Konsten
Family Counsellor
MA Social Science/Family Therapy

Kelly graduated as a qualified Family Therapist in 2001 after completing her Masters degree in the Netherlands.  Prior to this she gained her Social Science Bachelor's degree in social work.  She has lived in New Zealand for the past 10 years and has worked in a variety of settings such as child and adult mental health, addiction services and family support services.  Her passion is on strengthening family/whanau systems to support healthy partnerships between parents and children.

Gurdeep Singh
Clinical Services Coordinator 

Gurdeep started working with The Hearing House in June 2008.  Previously Gurdeep worked with the Kidz First Child Development Team, a service of Counties Manukau District Health Board, which works with developmentally delayed children and their families.