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Can you be proudly Papua New Guinean and still be shaped by life in Australia? After attending a Pacific networking event, I’ve been reflecting on cultural identity, the privilege of education and why our accents shouldn’t determine our connection to our roots.

We’ve become really good at complaining about how tired we are. But have we become terrible at protecting our rest? Something I’ve been noticing lately genuinely upsets me. The number of people who sit at their desks eating lunch while continuing to work. Answering emails between bites. Taking phone calls during their break. Rushing through their food because there’s always something else that needs to be done. And then wondering why they’re exhausted. I hear people talking a

Being an athlete gives you a valuable perspective around a sports board table. But athlete experience alone isn’t enough. That was one of my biggest takeaways from a recent Minerva Network discussion on women in sports governance and board leadership. I attended wearing a few different hats: as an Olympian, someone who has worked across athlete wellbeing and pathways, and increasingly as a Pacific athlete wellbeing advocate interested in how decisions made at governance level

For more than a decade, sport was something I experienced primarily from the athlete’s side. I trained. I competed. I represented Papua New Guinea. I became an Olympian. I experienced high-performance sport from the inside the pressure, sacrifice, expectations, relationships, politics, opportunities and decisions that can shape an athlete’s career. Since retiring from elite competition, my relationship with sport has changed. I’ve worked in athlete wellbeing and pathways. I’v

You may have seen, heard or read Brisbane 2032 described as a “home Games” for Pacific athletes. I love that idea. As someone from Papua New Guinea who now lives in Brisbane, there is something incredibly special about imagining athletes from across the Pacific competing on one of the world’s biggest sporting stages, so close to home. But I’ve also been thinking about a bigger question: What does a home Games actually mean for Pacific athletes before, during and after 2032? B

Resilience. Determination. Courage. Connection. Self-belief. These are words we use often when we talk about high performance and leadership. But they aren’t simply concepts that can be captured in a data set. They are lived. They are developed through experience. And increasingly, as technology becomes more sophisticated and artificial intelligence becomes embedded in the way we work, lead and perform, I find myself thinking about a different question: What will remain disti

Artificial intelligence is changing the way we think about high-performance sport. At a Queensland Academy of Sport Research & Innovation High Performance Summit I attended, one conversation kept surfacing: AI in sport. The possibilities are exciting. AI and data-driven technologies have the potential to help inform decisions around training, recovery, performance analysis and athlete preparation. But as an Olympian and someone who has spent much of my career working around a

For a long time, I thought high performance was about pushing. Work harder. Train harder. Be disciplined. Keep going. As an elite athlete, those qualities mattered. You don’t get to the Olympic Games without discipline, consistency and the ability to do difficult things when you don’t necessarily feel like doing them. But over the years, I’ve come to understand something else about high performance. You can’t perform at your best if your only strategy is to keep pushing harde

When we talk about high performance, we often talk about discipline. Talent. Consistency. Resilience. Hard work. But there is another ingredient behind almost every extraordinary performance that doesn’t always get the same attention: Collaboration. As an Olympian, I know firsthand that success is rarely a solo achievement. Yes, I was the one who stood behind the blocks. I was the one who dived into the pool. And ultimately, my name was the one beside the result. But I didn’t

High achievers are often very good at carrying a lot. We get things done. We solve problems. We take responsibility. We anticipate what needs to happen next. We keep going when things get difficult. And usually, those qualities are rewarded. They help us build careers, lead teams, raise families, create businesses and pursue ambitious goals. I know these qualities well. I’ve been an elite athlete. An Olympian. A working mum. A leader. A business owner. A speaker. I genuinely

Last month, I sat at my desk staring at an email. I must have read it five times. The words were right there in front of me, but I couldn’t absorb what they were saying. Something in me said: Go home. There was a time when I would have ignored that feeling. I would have pushed through. Answered a few more emails. Finished one more thing. Maybe taken some work home so I could “catch up”. Because somewhere along the way, many of us have learnt that pushing through is what high

The thing about feeling constantly “on” is that sometimes you don’t realise how much pressure you’re carrying. You move from one thing to the next. The meeting. The deadline. The school run. The presentation. The emails. The conversation you’ve been putting off. Your body might be sitting still, but your mind is already thinking about the next thing. I know this feeling well. As an Olympian, I spent years learning how to perform under pressure. There were moments when I neede

YYou’ve booked the holiday. The suitcase is packed. Your out-of-office is on. Your body is lying beside the pool or sitting on a beach somewhere beautiful. But your mind? It’s still in your inbox. You’re thinking about the email you forgot to send, the project waiting for you when you get back, what needs to happen next week, or whether you should just quickly check what’s happening at work. You’ve physically stopped. But mentally, you’re still going. And this is something I’