Dr Sheila Nankoberanyi BSc, MSc, PhD, DPPM | Clinical Research Coordinator Australian Centre for Clinical Studies | Social Advocate and Program Consultant | Committee Member PAADN | Fellow La Trobe University | Address: Level 5, Burnet Tower, AMREP Precinct, 89 Commercial Road Melbourne, VIC 3004 Australia
Web:     www.nucleusnetwork.com.au
Mobile: +61451782236
Email:    s.nankoberanyi@nucleusnetwork.org.com   | nankshila@yahoo.com  

Biography:

Dr. Sheila Nankoberanyi (PhD) is a Ugandan born, educated and compatriot based in Australia-Melbourne as an expatriate working as a Clinical Research Coordinator in the Australian Centre for Clinical Studies and a medical Researcher with La Trobe University. She is married to Dr. George Williams Mbogo (PhD) currently a Laboratory Medicine Fellow at RMIT university Australia; Medical Scientist with Northern Hospital Melbourne, and Goulburn Valley Hospital Shepparton; and formerly a Senior Medical Research Officer at the Burnet Institute and La Trobe University Australia. This mother of two is an internationally recognised Global Health Medical Researcher, program manager, academician, teacher, leader, mentor, philanthropist and a fierce advocate for Gender Equality particularly in areas of; Science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM), leveraging from her multi-disciplinary and diverse knowledge base and accomplishments.  

Dr. Nankoberanyi’s humble academic journey resonates with the common Ugandan girl; where she attended St. Anne Primary School Kabowa at elementary level, Ordinary level at Our Lady of Good Counsel Gayaza where she emerged the best candidate, attracting award of a competitive position at Uganda Martyrs’ SS Namugongo, along with the elites and the “crèam de la crèam” of Uganda. Here she excelled significantly despite her incredibly tough life characterised by school fees problems, ongoing family torment, peer bullying as well as chronic lack of basic amenities. In fact, she was defined as “omuwala wa uniform enkadde and skirt y’ebimuli” loosely translated as “the poor girl with an old uniform and a single flowerly skirt”. Tenacious and indestructible as she is, she excelled and even attracted a government of Uganda Scholarship to Makerere University to pursue her passion in Biomedical Laboratory Technology.

After this basic training as a Medical Laboratory Practitioner, she initially worked in the Uganda public health laboratories to improve medical diagnostics and in response to her career progression and zeal to solve societal problems, she decided to add a research component to practice. She subsequently undertook research on WHO/TDR funded the neglected Sleeping sickness disease; She also pioneered establishment of the first cGMP certified Vaccine production Biotech Company in sub-Saharan Africa under Prof. Vinand Nantulya (formerly at Global Fund). Simultaneously, she was awarded the prestigious Forgaty International Fellowship under Prof. Philip Rosenthal from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) to study anti-malarial drug resistance in Uganda during her Masters of Science training in Molecular Biology from Makerere University. Due to her passion for leadership and driving societal change, she concurrently enrolled into a Postgraduate diploma in Project Planning and Management at the Uganda management institute before embarking on doctoral studies with Ass/Prof. Warwick Grant PhD at La Trobe University in Melbourne Australia. Dr. Sheila is a passionate and empathetic leader throughout her life depicted in church fellowships, student leadership, voluntary works and peer mentoring that has yielded Doctors, Teachers and other societal change agents in Uganda and worldwide especially through her work with Prince Wako Foundation and the Girl Child Project.

Dr. Nankoberanyi has an exceptional and inspirational journey that spans beyond her areas of formal competence defined by a long history of challenges definitive of an African Girl Child such as: 1) Lost her mum at 6 years of age, predisposing her to a tough childhood and despicable struggles with a polygamous father and the ensuing step mother wickedness; 2) She survived an early marriage to an HIV positive older man; 3) she committed herself to education from an early age to date with exceptional and unrivalled success relative to the male dominance; 4) she defied the cultural stereotypes around Girl Child education and career progression to become the first African to complete a fully funded PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics from La Trobe University at 32 year; she strongly advocates for African women inclusion in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) in higher education and corporate institutions in an attempt to dismantle the female glass ceiling; 5) an experienced career mother in the diaspora.   Her life long journey is an armament of expertise entailing real-life experiences and solutions capable of shifting the systemic African girl child vulnerabilities into forces for positive change for the future and overall impact towards the Agenda 2063 of the African Union and the UN sustainable development goals. She therefore has the “holy grail” to our efforts towards GIRL CHILD EMPOWERMENT in Africa and the world at large in all aspects including education and family planning. As proud pan-Africanists, she is a definitive evidence of our desired outputs as the Girl Child empowerment initiative in Uganda. She is a self-made, trailblazer and a force to reckon with in our generation that surpassed economic, political, racial, ethnic and gender barriers to this end. Her conviction to build the next generation of change agents using a sustainable and holistic approach across all domains of society, is the ultimate ingredient for the engraving prosperity and self-reliance in the DNA of our girls in Africa.  Henceforth, please join this force of change as we move to ultimately rewrite the history of our motherland Africa for our children to inherit and take pride in. Thank you so much

#GIRLCHILDINNEED2019