Pacific women's narratives offer insight into how universities currently under-serve and exclude Pacific communities in their everyday practices. Utilising a women-centred Pacific research methodology (masi methodology) this article shares the results of talanoa with twenty-seven Pacific women who collectively represent 216 years of experience working in New Zealand universities. Pacific women's stories indicate that we continue to experience the devaluing and exclusion of Pacific knowledge, negative effects of neo-liberalisation, excess labour, and multiple exclusion practices. Importantly these narratives further develop our understandings of desirable diversity and excess labour and how these two concepts interact with each other.