About
Professional
After spending over a decade as a fine dining chef, I decided I would move on to study health. The goal was to stop feeding the over-served and start helping the under-served. In 2021, I made the move back from Australia to the United States and began my journey into human health. Initially pursuing the idea broadly, unsure of what role I would find myself in. Through my journey, I was constantly gravitating towards the relationship between human health and social issues—leading me to public health and epidemiology.
Education
The Integrative Human Health, Bachelor of Science program at Purdue Northwest was a perfect fit for me to be able to explore careers in health care while taking numerous electives that fit my interests. My minor in Sociology was critical in understanding the social science research methods that translate to public health. It was in the social sciences that I was able to get my first publication in the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research, investigating the large scale effects climate change will have on migration (Available here).
Since graduating in 2023, I moved straight into the Master of Public Health program at Purdue’s flagship campus in West Lafayette, Indiana. It is here that I have focused on evidence based methodologies and practice by utilizing the Biostatistics concentration and filling my curriculum with electives focused primarily on epidemiology and global health. The interdisciplinary nature of public health has been critical for allowing me to expand my focus across many different research interests and learning to work with diverse teams.
Over the course of Spring 2025, I was fortunate to complete my 200-hour MPH Practicum with the Division of Viral Hepatitis at the Indiana Department of Health. I was responsible for researching, analyzing, writing, and presenting the Indiana Foreign-Born Chronic Hepatitis B Surveillance Report. This was the culmination of my MPH work, allowing me to show my proficiency using R Studio and Quarto Publishing for literature review, data analysis, GIS, and report writing.
Experience
Epidemiology
Since May 2024, I have been privileged to work as a Viral hepatitis Investigator within the Indiana Department of Health. This has functioned as the perfect bridge between theory and practice. Through the internship, alongside my previously mentioned Practicum project, I have been immersed in the full cycle of applied epidemiology. Spending hours every day working inside of a surveillance team has taught me how the ideas I have learned in my MPH program translate to the ground level everyday.
Furthermore, beginning in May 2025, I have been working inside the Northern Lake County Environmental Partnership. Supporting an NIH-funded study focused on the neurological, biological, and environmental impacts of heavy metals and PFAs in northern Lake County, Indiana by administering informed consent, demographic surveys, and NIH toolkits to human research participants. This experience in environmental epidemiology has allowed me to further understand the relationship between academic and community research. For the 2025 Health and Human Sciences Research Fair at Purdue, I presented a poster of analyzed descriptive statistics of recruited participants to assess sample representation, delivering insights to internal and external stakeholders to guide ongoing recruitment.
Pharmacy
In 2021, after stepping away from the kitchen, I found myself a job in a Walgreen’s pharmacy. At the time, it was entirely new to me, and admittedly overwhelming. Within the first couple of months working in the pharmacy, I was able to get certified to administer vaccines—at the height of 2021 fall COVID-19 boosters. While giving up to 100 vaccines a day and pursuing my undergraduate degree full-time, I was able to become a Certified Pharmacy Technician (CPhT). Shortly after my certification, I moved on to inpatient pharmacy to learn more about the health systems. Today, I am still CPhT certified and licensed in both Illinois and Indiana. My past experience in the pharmacy has lead directly into my interest in One Health issues like antimicrobial resistance (a topic of many MPH projects I have undertaken).
Former Chef
Before embarking on this journey into public health, I had spent over a decade studying food and working in restaurants. I brought the same discipline and vigor into my studies that I previously held as a chef. The kitchen was hard work, as one would expect, full of tight deadlines and a need for precision. It is impossible to put together a list of the skills I learned in the kitchen but some things I know are: patience, leadership, humility, and handling pressure.
Personal
The primary goal of creating this website is to allow potential employers and colleagues to get a more in-depth look at my interests. But even more so, it is a personal project of mine to create a space that will allow me to further develop my writing. Eventually, I hope to use the blog space to develop more op-ed type pieces following a similar style to the recent publication I had with TIME Magazine. Writing has become a hobby of mine that I intend to continue pursuing once my academic career is through.
Outside of reading and writing, I am an avid traveler. Back in my former life as a chef I spent a number of years living in New Zealand and Australia and traveling across over twenty other countries. I love people and their cultures—cooking and eating was my way of discovering different countries people and their livelihoods. Now that my life has moved in a more stable direction, I hope to continue to find unique ways to connect with others from around the world, and hopefully return the help that so many have generously extended to me along the way. My global experiences as a chef have directly influenced my passions I have now for labor rights, public health, and our environment.