As part of our Women in Power series, we are celebrating the remarkable leaders driving the Pacific and Timor-Leste’s clean energy transition.
Solar power is lighting up Fiji’s rural schools and it is changing who gets to build that future. Tamara Smith is at the centre of both. Based in Nadi, Tamara is the Fiji Office Manager for Its Time Foundation (ITF), supporting the delivery of solar installation projects across off-grid rural schools. Her role spans almost every part of the work, from communicating with schools and stakeholders to coordinating logistics, tracking projects and building the systems that keep them moving.
Her path into the sector began with a leap into the unknown. At the end of 2023, with her children overseas, Tamara decided to leave a steady job, start freelancing and embrace new opportunities. That led her to ITF founder Rob Edwards, who was already installing solar energy systems at Fijian schools, giving students reliable light to study by and expanding energy access for remote communities. When ITF scaled up its work in the region, Tamara came on as its locally based Office Manager, helping strengthen the systems behind a fast-growing portfolio.
Through REnew Pacific, ITF works in partnership with Fiji’s Ministry of Education and the Australian Government to bring clean, reliable 24-hour solar power and internet to remote schools that once relied on costly diesel generators. Its first REnew Pacific project, building on a 2024 pilot at Buakonikai Primary School on Rabi Island, is delivering solar power to more than 30 remote schools. In October 2026, at Pre-COP31 in Fiji, Australia announced a second REnew Pacific project with ITF, expanding the work to 13 more remote schools across Vanua Levu, Viti Levu, Taveuni and the Yasawa Islands. It will install solar and battery systems at schools and teachers’ homes, along with Starlink internet, laptops and smart TVs, benefiting more than 1,200 students, around 325 teachers and family members and an estimated 7,500 people in surrounding villages. Beyond REnew Pacific, ITF’s team works on other schools across Fiji as well.
For Tamara, it is the children in those classrooms who matter most. “The impact this has on children learning and the wider community is very significant,” she says. “They learn and are instilled with the importance and value of sustainable and renewable energy, in safeguarding our futures.”
This year, alongside her management responsibilities, she took on a project especially close to her heart: helping organise Fiji’s first all-women contractor team. The team travelled to Ratu Naivalu Memorial School on Waya Island in the Yasawas to install wiring and solar systems, followed by a women’s leadership workshop and a women’s panel at the SEAIPI conference in Suva in March 2026. It is an approach ITF is continuing across its work.
Working alongside women in trades showed Tamara both the opportunities and the barriers that remain. “It is rare to have women working in trades but it has been a privilege to meet and work with a few on this project,” she reflects.
She has seen how hard it can be for women to speak up about pursuing trades careers, often with little support from family and friends and how easily they can be outnumbered once in the industry. “We must work extra hard for the recognition, acceptance and progress of girls and women in the trades,” she says.
Looking ahead, Tamara wants to grow the impact of these projects, keep supporting student learning and push for more intentional involvement of women in trades across the renewables sector. Her message to young women is to be deliberate about where they are headed. “You have opportunities out here to do anything you put your mind to,” she says. “Be intentional about where you want to be in two, five and ten years and know that while your plans may change, it is very useful to have your own markers of progress.”
Tamara has a message for businesses too. Acknowledging women as equal contributors matters, she says, but it is not enough on its own. Real training and genuine pathways have to come with it. “You need to open the door and take action, give women the tools, allow women the space to be trained, to take on roles they are skilled in and gain experience,” she says. “It is imperative to walk the talk.”
For Tamara, the real measure of success is what opportunities she can create for the next generation. “If I can help in even a small way to create a future where a girl sees a woman installing solar panels, leading projects and shaping the industry and thinks, ‘I can do that too,’ then I’ve done something that matters.”
Tamara’s story is part of ITF’s work with REnew Pacific, bringing clean, reliable solar power to remote schools and the communities around them across Fiji.
Learn more about REnew Pacific’s projects with Its Time Foundation:
Across the region, women are stepping into roles that are reshaping how energy is generated, managed and shared. Their leadership is powering homes, schools and businesses with clean energy, building stronger, more resilient communities and showing what an inclusive energy future looks like.
We’re proud to showcase some of these remarkable leaders through our Women in Power series, which highlights women powering change through REnew Pacific.
