Matti Clements is a sports psychologist with over 15 years experience in the field. She is current the director and senior psychologist of Mental Edge Consulting, a consulting firm that aims to enhance performance, resilience, and wellbeing with professional athletes and coaches, corporate teams and management, or any person of any age wanting to reach their true performance potential.

Currently Matti is working with the St Kilda Football Club as the General Manager of People & Culture; developing and delivering culture and wellbeing strategies; she is also delivering a national emotional intelligence leadership program for high performance teams and selected leaders at Cricket Australia; and currently assisting the Australian Cricketers Association with their strategic planning for the national wellbeing and professional development programs and systems.

Recently Matti developed and rolled out the Netball Australia national wellbeing and professional development framework for players, coaches, management and staff and is working with Golf Australia to develop a national pathway of wellbeing service.

Previously, Matti was a Senior Performance Psychologist at the Australian Institute of Sport for 3 years before taking on the role of National Wellbeing Manager for the AFL Players Association.

Matti says one of the most important things for an early career psychologist is to not be constrained by what you think psychology is. She says psychology is many different things, can take you anywhere and that the psychologist’s skill set transgresses multiple industries where many creative jobs can blossom and bloom. Matti says we need to stay open minded and be creative. Matti’s career is a good example of this, so have a listen to see how we all wear it differently with Matti Clements.

Visit the website to check out all the links Matt spoke about and her best self-care tip.

Dr Ursula Sansom-Daly is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Behavioural Sciences Unit, in the Kids Cancer Centre, Sydney Children’s Hospital, which is the largest research group dedicated to paediatric psycho-oncology in Australia and New Zealand.  She also works as the clinical psychology registrar for the Sydney Youth Cancer Service, the largest team dedicated to the care of adolescent and young adult (AYAs) cancer patients in Sydney.  Through this role Ursula has worked with young people and families living with cancer on a range or presenting issues across the cancer trajectory.

Ursula recently completed her PhD as a Leukaemia Foundation of Australia PhD scholar, researching psychological mechanisms that underpin adaptation to cancer among adolescents and young adults.  In 2014 Ursula was awarded the Inaugural Cancer Institute NSW ‘Rising Star’ PhD student award in recognition of this work.

Ursula recognises that research is not for everyone, but says her love for reading, thinking of ideas and writing means she gets excited about writing papers!!  She also talks about the career benefits of marrying clinical and research work so listen to this episode and you might get excited too!

I recently saw Ursula speaking at a Tele-mental Health conference in Adelaide about her teams research on the ReCaPTure LiFe Program (Resilience and Coping skills for young People To Live well Following Cancer) an online intervention for AYAs aged 15-25 years in the first year post-treatment.  I was excited to hear from someone in the early stages of their career so passionate about using E-health technologies to support vulnerable and isolated populations in Australia, an area that is expected to grow rapidly in the future.

Visit the website to check out all the links Ursula spoke about and her best self-care tips.