Personal Trainer, Founder of FiftyFitness

In a nutshell, I’m an educator. It’s what I was born to do and the common thread in what might seem a convoluted journey. Nursing was my first career. Then I decided to be a scientist and ultimately became a university chemistry lecturer. Now I’m a personal trainer.

Nurses are educators. I don’t have enough characters to explain all the ways, but you can trust me on this. It’s amazing how much from nursing that’s applicable to being a personal trainer. Knowledge of human body systems and common disease states, for example. You will also find me empathetic, caring and personable, essential traits for both nurses and personal trainers, in my opinion.

Every educator I know loves to learn and I’m no different, drawn to start a science degree at the age of 28. I worked weekends and uni breaks as a nurse during the 4 years of my undergraduate and honours study. I only stopped nursing a few days before starting my PhD in chemistry on a scholarship.

Typical of PhD students, I did casual work as a tutor and laboratory class demonstrator during my candidature. I thoroughly enjoyed these roles and knew I was good at them through student feedback and supervision of my teaching. An academic career with a combination of teaching and research became my aspiration.

After three years working as a chemist in two very cool positions, I landed my dream job as a chemistry lecturer. Like most academics, I got the job because of my discipline knowledge and potential for research output but have no formal qualifications to teach, even though teaching is a major role of a lecturer. I applied my innate teaching ability and developed on the job through practice and professional learning opportunities.