Dr. Rogena Sterling (PhD, LLM, LLB) is a legal scholar and interdisciplinary researcher based at Te Kotahi Research Institute, University of Waikato. She is the first openly intersex person in Aotearoa New Zealand to be awarded a PhD, with a research portfolio spanning human rights law, privacy, Māori and Indigenous data sovereignty, intersex personhood, and socio-legal ethics.

Rogena brings over two decades of academic and policy experience, including leading national and international collaborations. Her work has informed government policy on intersex inclusion, Indigenous rights, and data governance, including formal advisory roles with the Ministry of Health, Statistics NZ, Department of Internal Affairs, and Te Whatu Ora. She played a key role in developing the Māori Data Privacy Framework under the Tikanga in Technology programme and coordinated sector-wide consultation for the MBIE-funded Research Data Landscape project.

From 2020 to 2024, she served as Chair of Intersex Trust Aotearoa New Zealand and currently remains an active board member. She was also a co-author and presenter of the 2024 CEDAW Shadow Report on sex/gender and intersex issues, which she delivered before the CEDAW Committee at the United Nations in Geneva.

Rogena is a Ministerial appointee to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Board (2022–2027), a founding member of the Gender Justice Collective, and a board member of Pacific Women’s Watch. Her recent projects include developing ethics frameworks for Te Pūkenga, conducting data audits for non-profits, and writing on the reclamation of intersex personhood. Her work is deeply informed by lived experience and grounded in a commitment to equity, collective rights, and Indigenous methodologies.