Sitiveni Halapua was the director of PIDP until 2010 when he was elected to Parliament in the Kingdom of Tonga. He remained as non-resident co-director of PIDP until 2015. He was a former senior lecturer in monetary economics, senior research fellow in the Institute of Marine Resources and the faculty of Social and Economic Development, regional University of the South Pacific, Suva campus, Fiji. He is also a consultant to the Central Planning Department of Tonga, the Central Planning Office of Fiji, and the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, England. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Kent.