The Girl on the Roof

Nine decades, one life - a remarkable memoir by an Australian living treasure.

The Girl on the Roof by Valerie Brown introduces us to a bookish, rebellious child who had made an important discovery when she escaped to the roof of her large family home. As she watched the activities of her family down below, she found that they did not match the ideals her parents had taught her. Nor did her family's actions meet the ideals put forward in the books she was reading.

This simple observation led to a lifetime of concern about the damage done to a society when there are gaps between their community's good intentions and their practices. She and her team delivered pioneering change programmes to bridge such gaps – in partnership with a prime minister, each of the three levels of government, four universities, multiple communities, and several activist groups.

Her interests in health and the environment led her to design and deliver initiatives such as the first Australian science degree in health education; change an outdated public health department into the emerging New Public Health; design and deliver the country's first national drug summit; and establish community health training for doctors and nurses at Tribhuvan University in Nepal. After a stroke in her eighties, she recovered to supervise doctoral students and co-author five books on social change, including the highly successful Tackling Wicked Problems.

Valerie Brown AO is still promoting, discussing, and thinking about positive social changes. After nine decades, she is still that girl on the roof.