From planning healthy places to caring for healthy spines
My first profession was environmental planning and policy, thirteen years of it, built on a belief that healthy environments make healthy people. Chiropractic shares that core value, which is why the leap felt less like a career change and more like a change of scale: from the health of places to the health of the person in front of me. Chiropractor friends kept insisting I belonged in this profession, and after hearing one of paediatric chiropractic’s pioneers speak at a conference they’d bought me a ticket to, I stopped arguing. I completed a Diploma in Health Science at Auckland University of Technology in 2015, earned a college scholarship in 2016, and graduated from the New Zealand College of Chiropractic in 2021.
Practice followed in Rotorua, five years as an associate in a busy family clinic, with locum posts in Auckland and Matamata before that. Along the way I kept studying: SOT Categories and Cranials, Network Spinal, Neuro Emotional Technique, and I’m partway through the two-year Chiropaeds paediatric program. The nervous system is my abiding interest, in the clinic and in the research literature, and educating patients about how their own body works is my favourite part of any visit.
Now I’m home. I grew up in Springvale, spent twenty-five years in New Zealand and on the road, and came back to be closer to family. Animal patients have a place in my week too: I used to compete in dog agility with my Border Collies, and chiropractic care for animals is something I offer alongside the human caseload. Weekends are for the campervan, trail running, and a vegetable garden that keeps overreaching.