After completing an MPH (Hons - 2001) and a PhD in public health (2005) at the University of Sydney, I began my postdoctoral career in an interdisiplinary bioethics centre, then called the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine (VELiM). I was fortunate to be at VELiM when it was led by Prof Ian Kerridge, and when Prof Miles Little was still a daily presence and mentor.

At VELiM I developed coursework in qualitative research methods, and pursued an interest in the then-nascent field of public health ethics. Via multiple funded projects, including an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship, I worked with wonderful teams of postdocs and PhD students on the ethical and social dimensions of public health interventions including health promotion and screening, which later extended into foundational conceptual and empirical work on overdiagnosis.

Over 12 years I was promoted to Associate Professor and became Deputy Director. I also developed an increasing interest in the legitimacy of health policy, and--with my longtime collaborator Chris Degeling--extended my skills and knowledge into the field of deliberative democracy. We ran our first deliberative process--a series of community juries--together in 2015.

In 2018, I had an opportunity to move to the University of Wollongong to build a new centre. We launched the new centre, the Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values, in 2019, with myself as Director and Chris and Annette Braunack-Mayer as the other two senior academics. Our focus has been on data and AI (and other health tech), resource allocation and reducing harm and waste in healthcare, One Health, and infectious disease management.

Over 7 years we grew from 6 to 30 people, including our network of fantastic visiting fellows, enrolled and graduated PhD scholars, and worked with wonderful PostDocs and RAs. This was largely supported by our grant success - in all we have been CIs on >$25M in Cat 1 grants and >$4M in Cat 2-4 grants in our short collective life. 

ACHEEV is now the leading centre in the region for deliberative democratic methods in healthcare. We have run scores of processes, have developed high-quality deliberative methods, and have worked closely with policymakers. Most importantly, we are proud of our impact and the incredible achievements of our staff and students, and I am honoured to have had the opportunity to lead such an incredible team.