LORETO TOORAK
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CATHERINE BENNETT
CLASS OF 1978
Catherine has many flash backs to her school days, sitting on the tennis courts with friends eating lunch, being chosen to carry the cross and lead the Archbishop through the ‘new’ library on opening day, listening to fellow students playing music in the Oak Parlour. She was inspired in Biology by Val Stewart and her Physics classes with Sr Elizabeth. She was proud to be elected a Student Councillor and Sports Captain (volleyball); roles that helped set her up for future leadership roles. After studies at Melbourne and La Trobe Universities, Catherine went on to complete Honours in Biological Anthropology. Whilst completing a PhD, she discovered how epidemiology combined detective work and analytics to open up our understanding of disease causation, risk factors, outbreak control and prevention. It is at the core of evidence-based medical practice and public health policy. She progressed to postdoctoral work, followed by a Masters of Epidemiology, eventually taking up a lectureship in epidemiology at the University of Melbourne. She became Associate Professor and was Postgraduate Programs Director in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. After much hard research work, her group won a million-dollar NHMRC grant to establish a world first longitudinal cohort study of staph transmission in Melbourne, winning several awards for her teaching. In 2009, Catherine took up the inaugural Chair in Epidemiology at Deakin University and soon after was appointed Head of School of Health and Social Development. This year, to her surprise, she has become a public commentator on the COVID-19 pandemic after early approaches from the media for insight and translation of “pandemic speak” turned into regular media engagements and a 24/7 fulltime role. She has a number of research projects that she is a coinvestigator on, many PhD students, and is about to reconfigure the advanced epi teaching at Deakin to include more infectious disease epidemiology. Catherine credits her Loreto education with providing her with the vision, rigour, maturity and confidence to grasp opportunities and to never look back. “Once I commit to something, I always give it my all. An appetite for learning and drive for excellence instilled through my parents and reinforced by Mandeville has given me a wonderfully rich and fulfilling professional and personal life.” 64
MARISSA PIAZZA CLASS OF 2010
School highlights for Marissa were Literature with Mrs Thompson and Art with Mrs Beck, who encouraged her to pursue her passion of oil painting. She also has very fond memories of the PAF – in Year 12 she was a Design Leader for Mornane and remembers being thrilled to design and create the outfits for them to wear in the performance, featuring lots of leopard print, she remembers. While studying Commerce/Law at Monash University, majoring in Economics and Finance, Marissa was also able to travel to Europe. Her Loreto education instilled in her a strong sense of social justice, so she also volunteered at the St Kilda Legal Service for several years, helping disadvantaged locals solve their legal issues. Marissa got her first ‘real’ job at Mecca Brands, managing their compliance/regulatory work. She is now a Corporate Mergers and Acquisitions Lawyer at Minter Ellison. This enables her to think analytically and be ready to communicate with a wide range of founders, senior management, advisers and legal counsel. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Marissa and alumna Meg Stacey (2010) co-founded Literati Book Club, a book subscription service and ‘book club’ community as a response to the struggle with Melbourne’s lockdown monotony and the reports of increasing loneliness. Together they liaise with publishers to secure the most thoughtprovoking, entertaining reads for their subscribers, interview authors at monthly live Q&A book club sessions and review books on their blog. They also run an Instagram account to keep their subscribers engaged @literatibookclub__. Marissa’s career highlights include the relationships she has formed working in M&A and starting her own business, which gives her the opportunity to flex her creative skills and apply the business acumen she has developed as a lawyer. As a reader Marissa enjoys a mix of intriguing, relevant contemporary fiction, non-fiction and the odd ‘classic’. Marissa’s Loreto education taught her to pursue her passions. No career was out of the question. The art, literature, performing arts, music offerings were really extraordinary. She understands now how fortunate she was to attend a school like Loreto, where her curiosity was encouraged, and she could fully explore her interests.
