Pro Vice-Chancellor (First Nations Strategy)

Professor Odette Best

The Pro Vice-Chancellor (First Nations Strategy) has responsibility for University-wide leadership in Australian Indigenous strategy, policy, and culture in support of achieving the University’s core functions of education, research and engagement.

Background

Professor Odette Best is a Wakgun mob member of the Gorreng Gorreng Nation and holds a Boonthamurra bloodline with adoption ties to the Koomumberri (clan), of the Yugambeh Nation. 

Professor Best holds a Bachelor of Health Science, (University of Sydney), Master of Philosophy, (Griffith University) and a PhD and has worked for 30 years in Indigenous health and nursing. Clinically, she worked for a decade at the Brisbane Aboriginal and Islander Community Health Service and within women's and youth prisons across Brisbane. In 2000, she moved into discipline teaching within tertiary sector. Dr Best’s leadership in Indigenous Health and Indigenous nursing is acknowledged nationally and internationally.

As an historian of Aboriginal nurses and midwives and a current recipient of an ARC funded project uncovering the histories of First Nations nurses and midwives in Queensland 1890-1950, Professor Best is passionate about uncovering and documenting the stories of Aboriginal nurses and midwives.

Memberships and affiliations

Professor Best is a Churchill Fellow (2002), a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (2018), a Fellow of the Australian College of Nurses (2021) and a Fellow of the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives (2019).