Valerie Wright-St Clair

Valerie Wright-St Clair is a New Zealand registered occupational therapist, occupational scientist and Professor of Social Gerontology and Occupational Science in the School of Health Sciences at Auckland University of Technology (AUT).

Academic career
Wright-St Clair's mother was a nurse and father a general practitioner. She completed her secondary education in Hamilton. She qualified as an occupational therapist in 1984, then practised in New Zealand hospitals and at Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland.

Her career in academia began in October 1990 when she was appointed lecturer at Auckland University of Technology. In 2008 she completed a doctoral thesis titled  'Being aged' in the Everyday: uncovering the meaning through elders' stories through the University of Auckland, supervised by Ngaire Kerse and Elizabeth Smythe. In November 2018 Wright-St Clair was appointed full professor at AUT with effect from 1 January 2019.

She is co-director of the AUT Centre for Active Ageing and joint head of research in the Occupational Science and Therapy department at AUT.