MrsLesley Hendy

Lesley recently started her role as Associate Research Fellow on the project Map My. This project uses Lesley's strengths in community engagement to expand on her previous work within a regional local government area, to encourage community engagement within a web-based platform. To build her knowledge of public health, systems thinking and policy, Lesley is currently undertaking a Masters in Public Health.

Lesley's previous role as a Healthy Kids Advisor for the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program, allowed her to combine her passion for childhood food habits with her work. Lesley was able to build strong relationships with stakeholders and lay foundations for food environments to be considered a higher priority within the community.

During her previous role, Lesley found the largest challenge was the influences from the food environment and conflicting perspectives of actors within the food system. This has ignited an interest in food systems and finding ways to impact the food environments to support community members, particularly children, to allow them to lead their healthiest life.