UFOCUS NZ has been in existence for 25 years, since 2000. During this time, we have seen staff members come and go according to life’s demands. Our staff has leaned towards aviation personnel, scientists, and professionals.

Our founding staff were:

• Suzanne Hansen (see below)
• Graeme Opie – former Senior ATC Hamilton International Airport, former RNZAF, pilot.
• John Cordy – retired Chief ATC Wellington International Airport, former RAF.
• Wally Ingram – engineer
• Bryan Dickeson – scientist, veteran NZ UFO sighting investigator.

Sadly, all four male colleagues have passed away in the last ten years.  Their expertise and professionalism are sadly missed.

UFOCUS NZ has new staff members throughout NZ, and our wider international community of colleagues allows us to draw on and utilize their skills and knowledge from around the globe.

UFO sightings can be life-changing, challenging to accept and understand, but at the same time, they can positively change our worldview, allowing us to believe that we are “not alone”.

Often, witnesses gain a greater awareness of our own planet, our environment, and a transformative desire for peace and security when faced with such unfathomable events in their lives.

UFOCUS NZ strives to educate the public about the reality of this worldwide phenomenon, which potentially offers humanity access to advanced technology, a deeper understanding of consciousness, physics, and potentially, new ways of living as a civilisation.

The cloud of derision and ridicule has moved away, with revelations emerging worldwide from governments, military personnel, whistleblowers, and witnesses confirming the reality of accounts once considered science fiction.

Scientific conferences are being established worldwide to study data on the phenomenon. The media has yet to catch up.

Suzy Hansen is a retired teacher, an author, researcher, UFO sighting investigator, experiencer, and public speaker. She has 50 years of experience in UFO sighting investigation and global research on the subject.

Suzy established UFOCUS NZ Research Network in 2000, as a national UFO sighting investigation and documentation network with a staff of seven, including two Air Traffic Controllers, a pilot, a scientist, and an engineer. She was instrumental in lobbying the then Chief of Defence Forces for the release of the NZ MoD UFO Files in 2010/11.  As well as having a nationwide staff, UFOCUS NZ is supported by appropriate professionals and scientists in an advisory capacity, both in NZ and worldwide.

Suzy began investigating NZ UFO sightings and interviewing witnesses in 1975, following a phenomenal experience when the car she was travelling in was followed and overtaken by a huge elliptical light, resulting in the car being lifted off the road, and 90 minutes of “missing time.”

In childhood, she and her family and neighbours had a sighting of a bright orange “bar” or cylinder of light over the Bombay Hills, south of Auckland.  The sighting was witnessed by hundreds of people south of the Waikato, and was reported on the radio and in the New Zealand Herald.  This event both enhanced and challenged Suzy’s worldview at a young age, and her interest in UFOs remained piqued.

She continued working independently from 1975-1987, when she moved north from Hawkes Bay and the East Coast to Tauranga.  Here she joined TUFOIG (Tauranga UFO Investigation Group) run by veteran NZ UFO sighting investigator, the late Harvey Cooke, becoming Harvey’s “right-hand man” for the group.

In 2000, Suzy saw the need for a nationwide research network.  Many of the elderly veteran UFO researchers were passing on, and research was operating differently now overseas.  Thus, she established UFOCUS NZ with a special focus on aviation/pilot sightings, and sightings occurring around the time of seismic and volcanic activity in NZ.

Suzy has lectured and conducted workshops internationally since 1997, in the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, about NZ UFO sightings and the Contact phenomenon. She has also facilitated Contact experiencer sessions at international conferences.

She speaks to community groups in NZ.  UFOCUS NZ held its own UFO conference in Rotorua in 2007.

Suzy has been featured in podcasts, interviews, articles, media, and documentaries (including NZ’s 60 Minutes – The Truth is out there, Korean TV, National Geographic’s Invasion Earth series, and History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series), and writes for several international UFO magazines.

She is also the founding co-ordinator of Communicator Link (advocacy & support for experiencers/abductees worldwide).

In 2020, Suzy was invited by international colleagues to assist in establishing a global coalition called ICER (International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research), comprising scientists, academics, and long-time, established UFO researchers.  Suzy is a founding Executive Board member, the New Zealand Representative, and Australasian Continental Director of ICER, a global coalition currently involving 32 countries, and registered as an NGO in Portugal.

Suzy is the author of The Dual Soul Connection – the Alien Agenda for Human Advancement, with contributions (footnotes, commentaries, and a Scientist’s Epilogue) by Dr. Rudy Schild, Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics, Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, USA.  The Dual Soul Connection addresses aspects of spirituality, consciousness, and metaphysics, alongside scientific concepts of ‘new’ physics and advanced organic “conscious” technology, all within the framework of alien contact, highlighting our potential interconnection with a wider universal family in mankind’s future.

Suzy’s focus has been on engaging members of the scientific community to participate in examining the wealth of science-related detail contained in UFO sighting investigation data relating to technology and physics, and in accounts of human interactions with extraterrestrial species/consciousness.  She believes one of the major issues facing mankind in the future will be open contact with other civilisations in the Universe.

Suzy Hansen