Danet is Thrive's Program Manager, and stars in the latest HTI Staff Spotlight.
Danet is HTI’s Program Manager for Thrive, a research program using new methods in AI and qualitative research that seeks to understand what helps or hinders young people finishing school well. She supports Thrive's project management, managing budgets and bringing together its many stakeholders.
Danet’s family lived through the brutal Khmer Rouge genocide in 1970s Cambodia. Inspired by her family’s experiences, she has just completed her Honours in Psychology while working full time on the Thrive program, and rising at 5 in the morning to fit it all in. She pivoted from a career in fashion to her now passion in research psychology. And she has even written a children’s book to keep her cultural stories alive for the next generation.
Beginnings in Cambodia
Danet, age 6, at her NZ citizenship ceremony
Danet was born in Cambodia, the youngest of four sisters. Her parents were survivors of the Khmer Rouge. “Both my parents were in labour camps during the Khmer Rouge, at the ages of 12 and 14. Danet said. “The government at the time sought to create a classless society and a lot of my family members did not survive”.
Several of Danet’s extended family members who survived the Khmer Rouge moved to New Zealand as refugees, where they eventually gained citizenship. They were able to sponsor Danet and her parents and sisters, and she moved there when she was three.
Danet then moved to Sydney at the age of 16, after her older sister established herself and urged the rest of her family to join, and the family settled in Liverpool where Danet finished school.
Having to pay upfront fees for university as a non-citizen was not an option for Danet’s family, so she went straight from school to a job screening resumes for a recruitment agency. She then moved to working in human resources (HR) for the fashion industry – a passion for the fashionable Danet – working for brands including Ralph Lauren and Dior.
Pivot to psychology
Then she decided to make a big change. “I was in a very comfortable position working in fashion. I was working for brands that I had idolized for a long time. I decided to leave that, and then I decided to, in a way, fast track my new career by studying and working at the same time,” Danet said.
She chose to study psychology because of its application to HR, however after working with research psychologists at the Australian College of Applied Psychology, she became more interested in the mental health behavioural research space, which is what attracted her to her role at the Thrive program at HTI.
Danet not only loves the work at Thrive because it relates to what she is studying, but she also draws inspiration from her family’s experiences, including her grandfather, who was a school principal in Cambodia.
Danet (left) with HTI colleagues
Education has always been deeply valued in my family. My grandpa was a school principal, which makes the Thrive project even more meaningful to me. By helping others finish school, I feel like I’m giving back by continuing the work they loved. - Danet Chapman, HTI Thrive Program Manager
It is this zest for life that drives Danet to keep a punishing schedule, rising at 5 in the morning to study, working a normal work day and then studying for several hours before bed, as well as on the weekends. She has plans for further study, with a PhD in Health.
Passions outside work
Amazingly, Danet is also a children’s book author, penning The Journey of Leak.
I found that a lot of Khmer children didn't really know of our folklore or our stories because that was lost over time and during the war. And I thought that it was important that we look after and protect our beliefs and traditions. So, I started writing Cambodian stories to share them with my nieces and nephews.- Danet Chapman, HTI Thrive Program Manager
"My sisters thought they were great, and they started sharing them with others. This eventually led to me self-publishing one of my stories last year.”
Danet's niece reading The Journey of Leak
Danet also manages to squeeze in ballet four nights a week, volunteers in palliative care hospitals and loves to travel with her husband, Joel.
“My husband and I have a goal of wanting to see the world together. We recently ticked something off our bucket list and saw the Northern Lights in Norway last year.”