Ramon Te Wake is a transgender

Transgender

Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....

 television presenter from New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, and singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

.

Te Wake was born in Dargaville

Dargaville

Dargaville is a town in the North Island of New Zealand. It is situated on the bank of the Northern Wairoa River in the Northland region. The town is located 55 kilometres southwest of Whangarei....

 to Māori parents Ray and Tilly Te Wake. She grew up in Ascot Park

Ascot Park, New Zealand

Ascot Park is a suburb of Porirua City approximately 22km north of Wellington in New Zealand.- External links :* at Statistics NZ...

, a suburb in Porirua

Porirua

Porirua is a city in the Wellington Region of New Zealand, immediately north of the city of Wellington, with their central business districts 20 km apart. A large proportion of the population commutes to Wellington, so it may be considered a satellite city. It almost completely surrounds...

. She moved to Wellington

Wellington

Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...

 in the early 1990s, and then to Auckland

Auckland

The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...

 shortly after.

She released her debut EP, "The Arrival" in 2002 and toured New Zealand in R&B / Funk

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

 band Pure Funk during 1995 and 1996.

Her first presenting job was for Māori Television

Maori Television

Māori Television is a New Zealand TV station broadcasting programmes that make a significant contribution to the revitalisation of the Māori language and culture . Funded by the New Zealand Government, the station started broadcasting on 28 March 2004 from a base in Newmarket.Te Reo is the...

, where she was one of three people fronting Takatāpui

Takatapui

Takatāpui is the Māori word meaning a devoted partner of the same sex. In modern terminology, a person that identifies as takatāpui is a Māori individual that is queer, in other words gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or transsexual...

, which is Maori Television's first ever LGBT

LGBT

LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

 show. The show began in 2004 and still continues today. Te Wake also joined King Kapisi

King Kapisi

King Kapisi is a New Zealand Hip hop recording artist. He was the first Hip hop artist in New Zealand to receive the prestigious Silver Scroll Award at the APRA Awards for Songwriter of the Year for his single Reverse Resistance in 1999, which followed on the popular release of his debut single...

 in presenting the Pasifika 2005 festival, televised on TV2.