Starting my career in medicinal chemistry taught me early on that the most interesting problems sit at the intersection of science, people, and experimentation. That curiosity eventually led me into People and Talent, with one very caffeinated detour along the way: co-founding a specialty coffee roastery and café in Melbourne. It taught me a lot about people, pressure, leadership, and the chaos of business.

Fifteen years later, I’m still focused on the same fundamentals, just with better tools and fewer coffee burns. Today, I’m Head of People and Talent at Fortiro, a Melbourne-based AI fraud prevention scaleup. I also consult and coach early-stage founders on building people functions that actually hold up under pressure, not just look good on paper.

I’m an accredited coach, have built people functions from scratch across multiple high-growth startups, and I’m deep in exploring what AI can genuinely do for People teams. The jury is still out on some of it, but the results so far are interesting.