Named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Asia last year, Mikaela Seymour has achieved much since graduating from Griffith University.
Seymour studied for a Bachelor of Medical Science at the Queensland-based university, and then a four-year postgraduate Doctor of Medicine (MD), which she completed in 2015. While there, she decided the most rewarding path would be to pursue rural and remote medicine.
“I completed a rotation in tropical medicine organised by the School of Medicine and Dentistry in partnership with Rural Medical Education Australia [RMEA],” she says.
Mikaela Seymour
Then, in 2020, she was embedded with the newly established Sustainable Development Program aerial health patrols based in Balimo, in Western Province, Papua New Guinea.
“This is an area that had been wholly neglected, without a doctor for 20 years,” Seymour says.
She recalls focusing on preventative healthcare rather than reactive – prioritising what would have the biggest impact on the community in the long term – despite the challenges presented by the remoteness of some of the region.
“There was no phone connection, no electricity, no running water – we had to collect our water from the river and boil it. That made infection prevention and control [difficult]. So [we were] using a lot of innovation to try and get the best outcomes for patients, with very limited resources.”
Making an impact through medicine
Since that first visit Seymour has returned to work in Papua New Guinea every year.
“I have served on hospital ships sailing to some of the remotest islands of Milne Bay, and volunteered back at Kiunga Hospital to support Griffith’s rural medical and midwifery students program,” she says.
“More recently, I joined Australian Doctors International as the doctor on the ground for a new program serving Middle Fly, an area of PNG that has been neglected for too long. I had the absolute privilege to fly on small Caravan eight-seater planes, landing on grass air strips, and be hosted by communities.”
Seymour says Griffith’s rural program, in partnership with RMEA, made her adaptable.
“I am now completing my advanced training in public health medicine and spent a year studying at the PNG Institute of Medical Research in Goroka,” she says. “During my time there I was able to work with the WHO office in the quantification of the effect of Covid-19 on health systems, work for the chief public health officer of Eastern Highlands, and be supervised by Dr [Pamela] Toliman, one of the lead scientists in the validation of Covid-19 rapid diagnostic tests in the Pacific.”
“[Griffith’s] emphasis on multidisciplinary and cross-cultural training made it easy for me to assimilate into these diverse teams.”
Tech innovations for good
Raymond Siems studied a Bachelor of Engineering at Griffith and has founded multiple innovative tech businesses that have had a positive impact.
“When we start a new company we look for something that is good for people or society and also good business,” he says. “This is influenced by the systems thinking I was taught at uni – an approach to problem solving that takes into account the overall system and connections between elements, rather than each part in isolation.”
While at university, Siems met the co-founders of his first enterprise, Ventoura, a team with which he still works with nearly 10 years on.
“We were passionate about travel and wanted to create a platform for peer-to-peer experiences so that travellers could get off the beaten track and see the locals’ side of their destination,” he says.
“We were lucky enough to start working with investors from Helsinki. We were young and jumped at the opportunity to move. A few weeks later we were in Finland.”
In 2016, a scholarship took Siems to the University of Cambridge. In the UK he has founded startups including Catalyst AI, which uses data science and machine learning to help fashion companies reduce waste by optimising supply chains, and created a crowdfunding platform to support National Health Service workers.
“During the pandemic our team helped to build a fundraising and distribution platform that was able to transform gifts in kind and donations from the public into support for about 100,000 healthcare workers,” he says.
His latest business, Ravio, aims to bring data-driven decision-making to team management, to enable companies to pay people fairly and build more diverse teams.
“What you get paid at work is opaque and filled with bias. And yet it [has] such a big influence on our lives. It determines the lives we can lead and many of the opportunities we have.
“We help companies improve their compensation practices, analysing their gender pay gap, and evaluating whether they are paying their employees fairly and competitively with the market with our benchmarking platform.”
Siems says starting out at Griffith gave him the drive to keep innovating and founding new projects.
“The technical skills I learned through my degree gave me foundational skills I was able to rapidly build on once I started my career,” he says. “Learning the theory and quickly turning it into practice. This helped in turning a business idea into something real without hesitation.
“Often there’s no secret sauce; the answer is just getting started and persevering.”
