For many years I was helping people improve their diet and physical activity in my dietetics clinic, until one day, despite having a comfortable life, I realised that I needed to make a change because I realised I could add so much more to people's lives than advising them on diet and physical activity .

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A New Chapter Begins

I decided to move to Adelaide, Australia, and begin my PhD at the University of Adelaide, which is part of the Group of Eight, the eight leading universities in Australia.

My doctoral research areas were nutrition, lifestyle, and reproductive health.

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Postdoc in Nutrition and Health

Before I finished my PhD, our research team won the competitive funding needed for my first postdoctoral position, a project worth nearly one million dollars. The project was aimed at creating lifestyle changes in women who were planning pregnancy or had recently become pregnant. Why was this research important? So that both the soon-to-be mother's and their children would be protected from many diseases and health challenges.

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Postdoc in Health Decision-Making (Healthy Lifestyle)

While I was happy with the impact I was making to people's lifestyle and health through dietary modelling, one of the challenges for sustaining the impact of the recommended dietary models is translating it to long term change, as well as making the information accessible to the community.

So I began my second postdoctoral position—where I led the training of individuals across more than 85 specialised centres worldwide in making decisions regarding the development of health related guidelines and policy making.

These individuals included physicians, researchers, surgeons, university leaders, hospital directors, public health executives, and decision-makers in ministries of health across different countries.

My team and I helped empower these professionals so they could communicate their scientific knowledge in simple language to the public, ensuring that high-quality science reaches each person in society.

Another dimension of creating change is through my role in scientific journals that publish only credible research, not low-quality or sensational content.

As one of the decision-makers in these journals, I cast votes for the publication of articles that have strong scientific value, so that the circulation of knowledge for public health remains at the highest quality.

One of the defining points of my academic work is training the next generation of decision-makers, researchers, clinicians, and university educators.

I do this through my teaching role at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

My current mission

After working at such a high level in the community, I missed working with people at an individual level. Therefore, I pursued further training as a professional coach and mentor in the neuroscience area so that I have all the tools needed to assist people make meaningful and long lasting changes in their lives.