Like many high school graduates, I struggled to decide what to do with my life, but I’d been fortunate enough to have had some positive experiences at my local podiatrist as a teenager and decided to give it a try. From the first lectures on biomechanics and human movement, I was hooked! Soon after graduating, I took an opportunity to work with skiers in Japan where we made (ourselves) over 1000 footbeds in a ski season which gave me an appreciation for how much time and effort goes into making a good and effective orthotic. Since then, my personal love of strength and conditioning training led me to specialise in this area, and I’ve now owned a clinic in Subiaco WA for 6 years with a focus on rehabilitating foot and ankle injuries.

I’ll never forgot a lovely and desperate woman who came into our clinic 6 weeks before her physical exam to enter the police force. In her eagerness to get fit, she’d developed shocking bilateral Achilles tendinopathy. We got to work straight away and threw the kitchen sink at the problem, and to her credit, she was extremely compliant. She was good enough to send me a text the day she passed the physical, and even wrangled me a ticket to her graduation ceremony which I attended as a very proud podiatrist! These are the things that keep the passion to keep learning and improving alive.

There’s nothing better than being in a room of like-minded individuals and discussing the latest research in your field of work. I’ve found SEPA offers great and very relevant events for anyone working in the lower-limb sports medicine space, and I always walk away from SEPA events with new and instantly applicable knowledge.