Beyond Essential Systems was started for a single reason – to deliver real, positive, sustainable improvements in the lives of people in some of the most challenging, low resource and remote places in the world. This has been our vision since the beginning and achieving that vision would not be possible without the passion, expertise, and leadership of people from all genders that make up our team.
In honour of International Women’s Day 2022, we are spotlighting just four of the incredible women on the Beyond Essential team. From public health experts to software developers, from our head office in Melbourne to remote health clinics in Kiribati, the women of Beyond Essential have gone above and beyond to make our work possible.
Erin Mitchell, Co-founder and Tupaia Program Manager
How did you get involved with Beyond Essential Systems?
I have been involved in BES from the beginning, and have enjoyed watching it grow into the company it is today! My background is pharmacy, so BES has been a great place to be involved in working with health systems in a way that is a little different to standard pharmacy work.
What’s your favourite thing about the work you do?
The work we do is all about supporting the people working in health in the Pacific. We are trying to make their day to day processes easier by providing easy to use tech solutions to a context where more complicated systems wouldn’t be sustainable. My favourite thing is hearing that the Tupaia platform has been of use to someone, that the information they needed was available to them when they needed it, that previously would have been more difficult or impossible for them to have accessed.
What advice do you have for women interested in working in your field?
It is a wonderful area to work. I would advise anyone to just give it a go, especially if you are looking for change or interested in working in other countries. A volunteer placement overseas is a great way to try out development work, and if you love it there are plenty of opportunities that can follow. If you don’t love it, well you’ve at least had an adventure!
Nancy Tupou, Digital Supply Chain Officer for the Ministry of Health, Tonga
How did you get involved with Beyond Essential Systems?
I was introduced to BES through the Fanafana Ola Project with the MOH Tonga in 2018. The Public Health Divisions was using Tupaia Meditrak to collect aggregated data monthly and annually then reported through Tupaia Dashboards using different visuals. I was recruited again under DTAC as a Digital Supply Chain Officer in early 2021 to work with mSupply which our Central Pharmacy Medical Store use for stock management and mSupply mobile for collecting and reporting the COVID-19 vaccination data. COVID recently entered our shore and the Ministry have chosen Tupaia once again to collect and report COVID cases and lab results.
What’s your favourite thing about the work you do?
My absolute favourite would have to be learning new systems and different apps used to collect and report data and getting all beautiful smiles from the decision makers when they receive timely data in different visuals to help with their management decisions.
What advice do you have for women interested in working in your field?
Overcoming challenges and being able to help others while enjoying what you do is such an epic feeling. Find your strength and use it to expose yourself to new challenges and opportunities.
Juliana Mitchell-Wong, Data Analytics Engineer
Who are you and what is your role?
I am Juliana Mitchell-Wong, a Data Analytics Engineer. In my role, I work with data coming from a range of different systems that arrive in highly variable formats. The data is manipulated, standardised, aggregated, combined and fed into our systems (Tupaia and Tamanu). I engineer these data flows to provide a timely and automated process that ensures the data is reliable, consistent and organised.
How did you get involved with Beyond Essential Systems?
After nearly a decade out of the workforce focusing on family life, I was looking for a role that would allow me to maintain the key parts of family life whilst easing back into work life. BES put up an ad that caught my attention with its statement: “We offer reasonable work hours and flexibility, our staff juggle kids, second jobs, study and really unreasonable close relatives”. To me it showed an organisation with a leader that had humour and understanding.
Further research into the organisation provided insight into the impact the organisation makes to low/medium income countries in public health using technology. This combination of flexibility and impactful work is what attracted me to BES.
What’s your favourite thing about the work you do?
I love being able to work on projects in a vast range of industries including public health, education and supply chain. Regardless of the industry, I enjoy being able to create knowledge from the accumulation and combination of data that helps inform decision makers. But the most satisfying part is to hear the impact the knowledge has made. For example, a map of the COVID-19 vaccination status of every household in a country enabled the country to get its population vaccinated in a targeted way.
What advice do you have for women interested in working in your field?
I would advise anyone interested in working in this field to pursue their interests. It is a field that is rapidly changing and evolving; and one that is in high demand. More generally, it is important to find a work environment that suits them as that is where they will thrive.
Tessa Hughes, Fiji Tamanu Project Manager
How did you get involved with Beyond Essential Systems?
I started in this role in August 2021, just as lockdowns were starting!
What’s your favourite thing about the work you do?
Working directly with community members and people who are using our software is easily the best part of job! Fijians are incredibly warm and friendly people and getting to work with them is a huge highlight. Running training is always a fun opportunity, seeing how Tamanu can improve healthcare and make clinicians roles easier is rewarding. Of course, the travel and seeing new parts of the world is a huge bonus to this role.
What advice do you have for women interested in working in your field?
If you have a specific interest such as gender, health promotion etc, specialise in it! Once you have a specialist skill you are very sought after. Volunteering is an excellent way to pick up relevant work experience and start building a network. There are many volunteering opportunities that are now outside of business hours or can be done online. The Australian Volunteers for International Development program is an excellent way to get overseas and build on your skill sets.
