This year the LIONZ pride convened in the deep south & despite the weather causing quite a few travel delays, over 100 delegates + approximately 30 industry supporters came together for a dynamic weekend. Here are some insights from the LIONZ Co-chairs Emma Lacey & Jillian Lee & at the bottom there's a link to a comprehensive photo gallery
Jillian:
I want to acknowledge and thank everyone who attended LIONZ this year. The rapid growth of this forum is testament to the growing community of women and men who are committed to inspiring the younger generation; it is so heart warming to see an enthusiastic new generation of future doctors getting stuck in - the future of medicine in New Zealand looks bright!
Highlights for me included the fantastic sawbones workshop
and seeing the medical students proudly walking around with their ORIF'ed sawbones! 
Our keynote speakers Nick Petrie, Fiona Moir and Carrie Newlands were extremely well received and I hope that delegates were able to take home a lot of practical tips to reduce risk of burnout and improve resilience
Dinner at Larnach Castle was amazing and I loved hearing from Tim Love and Sue Stott; what an inspiration they both are!
Emma:
Thank you so much to everyone for coming to the LIONZ Forum 2025 in Dunedin at the ‘bougie’ Fable Hotel. The attendance just keeps increasing and we are so excited to see all the new faces and interest in this amazing world of orthopaedics. So many inspirational female and male leaders in one room at one event, it was mind blowing!
Everyone got involved and enjoyed some hands on experience from the first Arthrex ‘arthroscopy room’ which gave everyone a chance to practice their 3D skills
...to mixing Palacos with amazing LIONZ 2025 themed femurs! 
Thank you to all our SMO’s and training Registrars for supporting the students on the workshops too
This year we had a ‘Wellbeing’ theme which brought insightful self exploration with Nick Petrie and practical tips along with Fiona Moir who gave us great examples of how to manage ourselves and interspersed with some crazy moves in, ‘salmon, bear and mosquito’ – a version of paper scissors stone, to singing a beautiful Scottish Folk song which got everyone engaged!
Carrie Newlands zoomed in to provide us with an incredible talk on statistics and insights into discrimination and harassment. It is such an important topic and left everyone quite speechless.
As Jillian noted, we ended our event with a fantastic ‘dress to impress’ dinner at Larnach Castle, a fitting setting for the royalty of ‘Queen’ Sue Stott, our inaugural ‘Legend of Orthopaedics’
and our latest Mane Award recipient ‘King’ Tim Love
Sue & Tim made amazing speeches which left us all feeling incredible admiration,
and even a little emotional!
Many thanks to our our dinner sponsor Southern Cross Healthcare & to their CMO Dr Erica Whineray Kelly who also gave a heartfelt speech encouraging women at all stages of their journey to lean into the amazing networks & utilise resources such as LIONZ
The photos from the ever popular booth perhaps tell a different story of the evening... delegates have been emailed a link
Please join us for the next LIONZ meeting on the 6th and 7th June in Auckland.
Save the date, tell your colleagues & we can't wait to see you there!
Our sincere thanks to our sponsors for helping us create the hands-on workshops, provide attendance enabling services like cub-sitting (8 this year!) plus insightful speakers. Arthrex was our DIAMOND Sponsor & GOLD Sponsors were DBM Medical, Johnson & Johnson, LifeHealthcare, Orb Medical, Smith + Nephew and Stryker
Together Te Rau Oranga Fund, Medtronic & LIONZ members sponsored a record high of 5 students/HO's attendance (their insights coming soon) & of course our thanks to Enovis for sponsoring our key-note speaker
If you have any feedback or ideas you'd like to share with LIONZ, please don't hesitate to reach out! If you want to be added to our quarterly LIONZ newsletter please email vanya@nzoa.org.nz
To see the full LIONZ 2025 photo gallery CLICK HERE