She moved to Mudgee nine years ago from Nelson, New Zealand, where she was a tutor with Adult Learning Support (a community-based literacy organisation) and a study skills teacher at NMIT. For a short time she was also a trainer for Literacy Aotearoa. Prior to that, Berni had a 20 year pearling career that took her across northern Australia and through the Pacific, where she developed and delivered pearl technician training courses for local people in the Cook Islands, Marshall Islands and Kiribati.