Six members who come from or work in every continent: Heather Yeatman, Sonia Blaney, Gary Sacks, Sandra Crispim, Rosely Sichieri, Sharon Friel

Isabela Sattamini reports: One thing we can notice in this month's profiles is the enthusiasm among members telling about their personal and professional paths. Many of them are flexible and minded to travel or live abroad, to work on an important project or to gain new experiences with different cultures and contexts. That is so inspiring, especially to beginners. Our aim is to put members in contact, invite you to read and learn about other members' experiences, maybe find out something in common, decide to get in touch, start a project together, why not? So let's read some extracts from the new profiles, from the left above:

Heather Yeatman: 'I had always aimed to work in community or public health nutrition. My education included a science degree, an education diploma and then nutrition and dietetics….When I completed my dissertation on food policies and local government, I started to be more involved in policy making. I had the opportunity to be a board member of our food standards agency at a time when the entire food standards code was being rewritten. We managed to include some key changes, such as mandatory nutrition information panels… My involvements in policy work have been from the perspective of a public health and public interest advocate. It has primarily involved advocacy for community involvements in policy making, how to change policy consultation with communities to be more effective and meaningful and to keep community interests to the fore. Being involved across the range of food, health, medicines and agriculture sectors has been a unique opportunity and well suited to the current food policy debates'.

Sonia Blaney: 'I am from a little village located in the north part of the Quebec province of Canada. My interest in nutrition started when I was a child and was seeing a lot of malnutrition on the only channel of our family TV. At this point, I decided that I would be working in nutrition in countries where support was needed and where just a few people wanted to go…In 1992, when I started my nutrition work in Guinea-Bissau as a volunteer with very limited resources, rapidly, I realised that public nutrition works with little amount of resources, it brings results and that it was not only theory… Then I joined UNICEF in Indonesia where I work with passion in a new nutrition environment that is full of challenges and opportunities'.

Gary Sacks: 'I have developed a fascination for the complexity of food systems, and the challenges of promoting public health against the enormous influence of the corporate sector. My true passion is for the wildlife of Southern Africa, and I feel happiest when I'm in the Kruger National Park. My current position is a postdoctoral research fellow at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, where my research focuses on monitoring the policies and actions of the food industry'.

Sandra Crispim: 'I dream of a better world, where inequities in public health are non-existent; a world where the role of science is understood by all and implemented to the common and truthful profit of every single individual; where the contribution of diet as a risk factor for chronic diseases is clearly elucidated… My research has been focused towards the improvement of dietary measurements. I have studied the development of dietary assessment tools and evaluated their application in different study contexts, especially for application in national monitoring surveys across Europe. I believe that the appropriate collection and interpretation of dietary measurements are crucial to elucidate the etiology, prevention, and treatment of many chronic diseases. and that is what I work for'.

Rosely Sichieri: 'After finishing medical school I got a Master's degree in neurophysiology at the University of São Paulo. The year was 1976 and political effervescence was great at universities. I joined a large organised movement against dictatorship, at a time when in workers' neighborhoods childhood malnutrition was highly prevalent. I could no longer reconcile studying sleep-wake cycle in hamsters with the upheaval of the political activities in my country during the period of military rule, so in 1978 I got into the school of public health again at the University of São Paulo for one year's training. Working with primary health care services I collected longitudinal data of growth of children, breastfeeding and infections. My attempts to analyse these data made me realise the complexity of nutritional science'.

Sharon Friel: 'I am from a part of Glasgow where men are quite likely to die before the age of 55 years. Things are not much better for women. Intergenerational poverty and long term unemployment are not uncommon and the physical and mental health of such population groups is very poor. My outrage at these socially produced health inequities has taken me on a professional journey involving matters of global health; social determinants of health inequities; food policy and food security; climate change and health; and urbanisation and health – as an academic, a government advisor, chair of public health organisations, and member of national and international committees. My journey has been eclectic, profoundly moving and hugely satisfying'.