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A remarkable memoir from 95-year-old Valerie A. Brown AO, one of Australia's living treasures. Nine decades of one life, and a lifetime spent working to close the gap between what a society says and what it does.
Valerie was a bookish, rebellious child who made an important discovery when she escaped to the roof of her large family home. Watching her family down below, she noticed their actions didn't match the ideals her parents had taught her, or the ideals in the books she was reading.
That simple observation led to a lifetime's concern with the damage a society does to itself when there are gaps between its good intentions and its practices. Valerie and her teams spent decades delivering pioneering change programs to bridge those gaps, in partnership with a prime minister, all three levels of government, four universities, dozens of communities, and multiple activist groups.
Her interests in health and the environment led her to design and deliver initiatives including the first Australian science degree in health education, the reshaping of an outdated public health department into the emerging New Public Health, the country's first national drug summit, and the establishment of community health training for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 widely used Tackling Wicked Problems.
At 95, Valerie Brown AO is still promoting, discussing, and thinking about positive social change. After nine decades, she is still that girl on the roof.
Valerie A. Brown AO is an Australian scholar known for pioneering interdisciplinary approaches to complex social and environmental problems. As foundation director of the Local Sustainability Project at the Australian National University, she led research integrating science, policy, and community knowledge. The Girl on the Roof was launched by Niki Savva at Paperchain Bookstore in Manuka in June 2026.
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