Debbie Early, PhD

My key “T-shaped” skills include an ability for rapid learning, pattern recognition, empathy and translation, as well as strategic thinking.

This is particularly relevant for a “One Health” resilience approach at the intersection of:

• Emergency Management
• Adaptive Management
• Destination Stewardship

With a proven track record of being a team-orientated and adaptable professional, I have over 30 years international and cross-cultural experience in allied-healthcare, human-centered research, the life sciences and health tourism. Informed by medical pluralism and bioculture, I have worked, in 5 countries, across academia, multinationals, small businesses and non-profits in ethnomedicine and the agricultural, pharmaceutical, personal care product, wellness and agritourism sectors. In addition, I am a widely published, non-fiction author and I have served on several international, advisory boards related to clinical research, wellness, risk, adaptation and sustainability. Driven by curiosity, creativity and compassion I have a strong ability to link seemingly disparate concepts and am a self-starter.

My expertise focuses on Caring for People and Places, specifically for Blue Tourism within the areas of:

Disaster Risk Reduction

Disaster Response & Recovery

• CIMS framework (local & national application)
• Marine Ecopharmacovigilance

Psychological Resilience & Adaptation

• Social Prescribing
• Trust
• Risk Perception, Resistance & Action Inertia
• Technology and Human Behaviour

Sense of Place Disruption

• Trauma-informed Ecopsychology, Eco-emotions & Behaviour
• Psychological First Aid
• Disenfranchised Grief
• Extinction of Experience
• Shifting Baselines

Global Health Traditions

Planetary Health

• Ocean-Human Health Literacy
• Human-Ocean connection
• Sustainability

Therapeutic Spaces and Places

• Green-blue spaces and places
• Medicinal & Aromatic Plant-Culture Protection

I have experience working with teams across Eastern, Western and Indigenous worldviews. My international, and local, experience weaves science & recreation with art. This supports transdisciplinary leaders seeking innovative and practical approaches to future-focused co-design, and implementation, for adaptation, resilience and One Health.

Read what others say here.

“Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea.” ~ Sylvia Earle