Odette BestOdette Best is a Wakgun clan member of the Gurreng Gurreng Nation and holds a Boonthamurra bloodline with adoption ties to the Koomumberri, Yugambeh people. Odette is Professor and Associate Head: Indigenous Research and Community Engagement, School f Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Southern Queensland (Ipswich Campus). She commenced her training at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in the late 1980s, and further holds a Bachelor of Health Sciences (double major in Aboriginal Health and Community Development), Master of Philosophy and a PhD. Odette has worked for 30 years in Indigenous health. Clinically Odette worked for a decade, as sexual health coordinator at the Brisbane Aboriginal and Islander Community Health Service and within the women's and youth prison systems across Brisbane. In 2000 Odette moved into discipline teaching within nursing in tertiary sector. Odette's leadership in Indigenous health and Indigenous nurse research is acknowledged globally and she is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (the only Aboriginal Australian nurse), a Churchill Fellow (the first Aboriginal Australian nurse) and a Fellow of the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives. As an historian of Aboriginal nurses and midwives, Odette is passionate about uncovering and documenting the experiences of Aboriginal nurses and midwives and saving them from historical oblivion. Odette is Ivy Molly Booth's granddaughter. Read More Read Less