Neural Graffiti: Musings of a human with multiple hats

  “One gun was at his head, the other at his chest.” These words, spoken by an elder as she stepped off the combi on Friday morning, still echo in my mind. She was describing the ordeal of being hijacked—together with fellow elders and our driver—on their way to an Alzheimer’s awareness programme. The shock of it all is hard to process. Just eleven days earlier, at the Age-Friendly Communities Summit ahead of the IFA Global Conference in Cape Town, a colleague spoke about the risks faced by care workers and communities in the Global South. Safety, security, and access to services are inextricably linked. Friday’s events painfully reinforced that reality. As I reflect, three milestone lessons stand out: 1. The paralysis and the plan. When the call came through, my first words were, “Was anyone hurt?” What followed was a cascade of action: recovery arrangements, press holding statement, insurance notified, tracker activated, trauma debriefing set in motion. The crisis demanded ...

  Well, That Just Happened!  My Journey towards leading Commonage The Commonwealth Association for the Ageing (CommonAge) AGM has just concluded, and with it came the ratification of my role as Chair-Designate —a role I will officially take up in January 2026. I am deeply humbled and profoundly excited about the possibilities ahead. It feels almost poetic that this milestone happens in the same season as the International Federation on Ageing (IFA) Conference in Cape Town . My own journey into the global ageing space began at an IFA conference—Prague, 2012. At the time, I had been married for less than a year and was unknowingly pregnant. What stays with me, however, is not just the personal milestone but the remarkable way I got there. It was Margie Chapman , a giant in our sector, who planted the idea that my work as a social worker was worth sharing globally. I didn’t see it as extraordinary, but Margie gently nudged me onto a leadership path I hadn’t envisioned for myse...