Why Health Should Never Be a Guessing Game
I often get asked where the idea for Anokai Advisory originated from.
Anokai didn’t begin with a single moment of inspiration. It emerged from a pattern I’ve seen repeatedly throughout my career in health, across different roles, sectors, and systems. In each of these settings, my work consistently focused on helping people feel informed, confident, and supported to make better health decisions.
Anokai brings that experience together to create clearer pathways and stronger connections through healthcare, so people can navigate health decisions with confidence rather than guesswork.
Why advocacy is at the heart of my work
Advocacy has always sat at the heart of my work, shaped long before my career began.
I grew up on a tobacco farm in regional Victoria. Life on a farm teaches you to be resourceful, resilient, and to keep going even when the path isn’t straightforward. The irony that I’ve built a career in public health is not lost on me.
Growing up, I imagined I’d become a doctor. While I didn’t follow that path directly, I’ve spent my career working alongside exceptional health professionals and leaders, learning how different perspectives, disciplines, and sectors come together to achieve better outcomes.
Over time, that experience clarified where I do my best work: at the intersection of knowledge, systems, people, and decisions. That vantage point didn’t just shape my career, it became my lane.
The Upstream mindset
One of the most influential concepts I learned early in public health is the upstream mindset.
Instead of standing at the bottom of the river pulling people out one by one, you go upstream and ask: What could have prevented the fall in the first place? What support, protection, or system design was missing earlier?
Over time, this way of thinking wasn’t just a professional framework. It became how I see health more broadly.
Health is rarely straightforward. It’s dynamic, contextual, and deeply personal. When we’re well, we barely notice it. But when health is disrupted, stress accumulates, sleep changes, bodies shift, responsibilities grow, and complexity creeps in.
People move along this spectrum constantly. At times feeling capable and in control, while other times exposed, vulnerable, or deeply confused.
The hardest decisions tend to show up at the worst possible time. When people aren’t well, they’re often overwhelmed or anxious. Yet, that’s exactly when they’re expected to interpret information, weigh risks, and make decisions with long-term consequences.
This is where information alone isn’t enough.
Confidence comes from clarity, context, and knowing what matters now. And that’s when a critical question emerges:
How do I know which door to walk through to get the right outcome?
The core problem: Navigation
Across my career in prevention, health promotion, cardiovascular disease, early intervention, behaviour change, and large-scale national campaigns that reached millions of Australians, I saw that programs worked when evidence was clear, partnerships were strong, and pathways were simple enough to be adopted at scale.
Later, in corporate healthcare, including within a leading private health insurer, I saw the same system from another angle. Sustainability, access, affordability, customer experience, and equity are in constant tension. When that tension is managed well, it drives innovation. When it isn’t, it creates confusion.
Despite living in an age of endless health information, people are still expected to make high-stakes decisions with little clarity about what to do next, who to trust, or how pieces fit together.
Healthcare pathways are fragmented. Providers operate in silos. Accountability is diffuse.
Without clear navigation, even capable people can expend enormous effort and still head in the wrong direction. It’s like standing at the base of a mountain without a map.
This is where advocacy must evolve. Not as louder voices or more mixed information, but as clearer pathways, better preparation, and shared accountability.
Why this is personal
For me, this work is deeply personal.
I’ve always been the person people call when something goes wrong. Family, friends, colleagues - different situations, but the same questions every time: What do I do? Where do I start? What should I be asking? Can you help me?
In those moments, people aren’t looking for more information. They’re looking for clarity. They need someone they trust to help them sort through the mental load and see what matters most right now.
Sometimes people already know what they need; they just can’t access it clearly in the moment. Other times, they need someone to advocate for them and guide them toward the next best step.
Trust is what makes that possible. And trust should never be treated as a disposable asset.
I saw the same pattern play out in the corporate world, just at a different scale. When organisations were working toward the same outcome but pulling in different directions, I was often brought in to align agendas, reduce friction and build more meaningful relationships to create a clearer path forward.
Different context. Same principle.
Why women’s health matters now
Women have carried the weight of health system gaps for decades and for too long, have been medically underserved. Research blind spots, diagnostic delays, and clinical bias are well documented. Midlife health in particular has been poorly defined, inconsistently supported, and too often left to women to navigate alone, just as health decisions become more complex.
But something is shifting.
Healthcare is becoming more consumer driven, prevention focused, digital, and personalised. Forward-thinking organisations are recognising what has long been ignored: investing in the health of women is not only a moral imperative, it’s a strategic one.
Women are also becoming the most influential health and wealth decision-makers of the next decade, navigating care not just for themselves, but often for families, organisations, and communities.
This is why women’s health matters now because the cost of poor navigation is no longer invisible and “grin and bear it” is no longer tolerated in a world demanding greater clarity, agency and intentional investment.
Why Anokai and the road ahead
I keep coming back to one simple truth: your answers are only as good as your questions.
Anokai exists to help people and organisations ask better questions, see health and prevention more clearly as strategic assets, and navigate health and life-stage decisions with confidence and evidence rather than guesswork.
This is the beginning of Anokai’s journey, a period of listening, learning, and building what’s genuinely needed. Not more noise, but better pathways.
I work with:
Individuals - through non-clinical health navigation and concierge-style consultations that help people prepare, prioritise, and make sense of preventative and long-term health decisions.
Organisations - to translate health from an abstract concept into a strategic lens shaping how, when, and why they engage with members and customers around re-imagining health, wellbeing, and prevention and strengthening alignment between consumer needs and organisational intent.
What is clear to me is this: health is an asset and it’s too important to leave people guessing.
My work is to help people and organisations be more intentional, build clearer pathways, ask better questions, and move forward with confidence.
And that’s why Anokai Advisory exists.
Health is Human. Navigation Matters.
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I stand on the shoulders of many mentors and colleagues who have shaped my thinking and approach throughout my career.
In particular, I want to acknowledge: Prof Rob Moodie, Dr Rob Grenfell, Dr Helen Keleher, Dr Erin Lalor, Dr Leonie Katekar, Dr Linda Swan, Craig Drummond, Dr Nick Coatsworth, and Prof Steve Robson. Each has played a role in sharpening my lens on public health, systems thinking, and the importance of human leadership.
I’m grateful to you all.
As Anokai takes shape, I’m keen to connect with people who are curious about rethinking how we support better health decisions and healthcare navigation, and how we can do this in a clearer, more strategic, and human centred way.
If this resonates whether you work in health, finance, superannuation, insurance, industry, or leadership and you’re curious about rethinking how health creates value, I’d welcome connecting on LinkedIn.