Education and work

I graduated from Monash University with a PhD/Master of Educational and Developmental Psychology (2017), after achieving first-class Honours (Psychology) in a Bachelor of Behavioural Neuroscience (2010). 

I like to engage with a lot of different professional activities, and I’m lucky/dedicated/supported enough to have crafted my work-life to be pretty balanced. And I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with some awesome people who’ve taught me excellent lessons along the way.

I worked on mental-health related quality of life projects for 8 years with the AQoL team led by Professor Jeff Richardson, at the Centre for Health Economics at Monash University. We asked the public what they thought of different health conditions, making sure to account for mental health. A lot of the current tools don’t weight mental health when they’re figuring out what a Quality-Adjusted Life Year is worth. We constructed an excellent tool that’s used internationally and I got to learn a great deal about the economics of health management. I analyse information at micro- and macro- levels to help government departments decide how to spend their budgets.

Under the excellent guidance of Professor Phil Riley, now at Deakin University, I ran the longitudinal Principal Health and Wellbeing surveys internationally for 9 years. I completed my doctorate using longitudinal data from my Australian school principals dataset, and was awarded a full pass with commendations in 2016. I studied emotions, emotional demands, emotional labour and relationships with burnout, job satisfaction and quality of life in a massive longitudinal dataset. 

I’m currently consulting for Phil and the team at REDI on the New Zealand versions of the Teacher Health and Wellbeing and Principal Health and Wellbeing projects. I have a deep understanding of occupational health and wellbeing, the need for organisations to provide support and a united voice for their members, and how to successfully run large-scale, long-term projects.

I work with individuals in private practice, as well regularly presenting to leadership groups, community groups and doctors on context-specific issues regarding psychology and wellbeing. Alongside, I provide corporate statistical services and presentations when I can. I engage a range of stakeholders, over many levels, in many sectors, in multiple ways.