Sir Iakoba Italeli, GCMG, was appointed the Governor-General of Tuvalu on 16 April 2010. From 2006 to 2010 he was the Minister of Education, Sports and Health, in the government of the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Apisai Ielemia.
Italeli was elected to represent Nui in the Parliament of Tuvalu on a non-partisan basis; this lack of alignment is not unusual in the politics of Tuvalu; unusually for Tuvalu, Italeli represented a constituency where trilingualism is a feature, since many inhabitants of Nui originate from Kiribati, and thus speak Gilbertese, in addition to Tuvaluan and English, the fluency of which varies among local people.