Griffith University has named four winners at its prestigious Outstanding Alumni Awards 2024 ceremony in Brisbane with Leona Murphy taking out the top gong.
Ms Murphy received the Outstanding Alumnus Award for her illustrious career spanning 30 years shaping corporate strategy, operational efficiency, and large-scale transformation in the insurance industry, coupled with her philanthropic endeavours to improve the lives of individuals and communities.
Growing up on Brisbane’s southside in the 1980s, Ms Murphy developed an interest in law and finance which led her to study a Bachelor of Commerce at Griffith Business School, providing the ideal setting to combine her two passions.
Her tertiary education enabled her to gain new insights and different perspectives, helping her realise she was interested in being involved in business leadership rather than as a functional expert.
Ms Murphy’s degree led to career opportunities at RACQ, Helia, an Advisory Board Member with Griffith’s Climate Ready Initiative, and contributed to the healthcare space through WeCU.
The First Peoples Alumnus Award was presented to Nicholas Williams, a Bachelor of Business (Human Resource Management) graduate from Griffith Business School.
Mr Williams’s career has seen him reach the halls of the Australian High Commission in London as the First Secretary, Trade and Economics where he implemented and executed the Australian Government’s strategic priorities for Australia’s bilateral relationship with the United Kingdom.
As a proud Indigenous man, Mr Williams’s vision is for successful and sustainable First Nations economic development through international trade and investment.
Dr Kathryn Woodward, a Rhodes Scholar whose research aims to explore the experiences of health services among refugee populations in Queensland, was named as the recipient of the Young Alumnus Award.
Dr Woodward graduated from Griffith with a Bachelor of Medical Science in 2017 and a Doctor of Medicine in 2021, with her tertiary studies complementing her commitment to serving rural and remote communities.
She is currently undertaking her Doctor of Philosophy in Primary Healthcare at Oxford University, and hopes to return to Queensland as a primary care physician to support and uplift underserved communities and progress the shift towards more patient-orientated health systems.
The International Alumnus Award was presented to Dr Nsofwa Sukwa-Chitwa, a Bachelor of Biomedical Science and a Master of Nutrition and Dietetics graduate who has made it her personal mission to develop innovative solutions to some of the most pressing health issues of our time.
Dr Sukwa-Chitwa’s aptitude and passion for health is at the core of her work as a Clinical Research Fellow at the Centre for Infectious Diseases Research in Zambia, a country facing numerous public health challenges, with many revolving around infectious diseases and malnutrition in children.
She has made a significant contribution to the field of vaccine research and infectious disease with her research focused on the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of vaccines along with the development of methodologies to assess disease severity and vaccine effectiveness.
Learn more about the 2024 Outstanding Alumni Award winners.
