 I worked as a doctor in Australia in Canberra for a few years and then I'd always wanted to work overseas so I joined Doctors Without Borders and I went to my first mission was in Afghanistan. One of the life-changing things that happened to me there was realizing that to be a really good doctor, to really help my patients, I didn't just have to understand what their particular problem was on the day they came to see me, I needed to understand the context of their lives, how they lived, how their family lives, what was affecting their community and you know at the time the Taliban had just taken over Kabul where I was working, we were working in clinics near the front line so you know there was malnutrition, there was war, there was lack of basic things like clean water and all of that informs why people come to see you as a doctor and I think if you ignore all that and just give someone pills for whatever their particular problem on that day you're not doing a job as a good doctor so coming back from Afghanistan I wanted to be effective in that broader sense so I came to ANU and studied public health and I always thought I'd be a doctor, treating patients but studying public health, understanding its power to advocate for better lives for my patients, that set me on the track and now I'm an epidemiologist, public health doctor and researcher. I studied at ANU and that's given me incredible foundation to do the work I do and I believe that ANU is the best place to do this work, to do the research I do and to study so and when I teach I try and convey that to my students.