Born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand, Wilma studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston with Dorothy DeLay (violin) and Louis Krasner (chamber music). She was founding First Violinist of the Lydian Quartet, winners of the Naumburg Award for Chamber Music and multiple prizes at Evian, Banff and Portsmouth International String Quartet Competitions. She also worked regularly with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and led the Harvard Chamber Orchestra and Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra before being lured back to New Zealand as founding First Violinist of the New Zealand String Quartet. Those early years of the NZSQ were marked by an extensive Australian tour for Musica Viva and a residency and performances at the Tanglewood Festival.

A long and celebrated orchestral career followed as Concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and then the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Currently, Wilma is Second Violinist of the Flinders Quartet, curator/violinist of her own chamber music series, Wilma & Friends, and Musica Viva Australia’s Artistic Director of Competitions, overseeing the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and Strike A Chord, the Australian national chamber music competition for school-aged students. In New Zealand, she serves as a Board Director of the NZSO and is Co-Artistic Director of the Martinborough Music Festival, an annual chamber music festival in which she also performs. She relishes the privilege of playing with the Australian World Orchestra at home and around the world and enjoys guest-performing opportunities with the Australian and New Zealand orchestras. Wilma was recently presented with the 2025 Sir Bernard Heinze Award for her contribution to music in Australia.