Alison was born and raised a preacher's daughter in the Australian bush. She is a former Mathematics school teacher and medic. In 1990 Alison moved to New York City and became an Investment Banker on Wall Street, later enrolling at NYU film school studying film making.
On Sept 11th, 2001 Alison roller bladed to Ground Zero and became a volunteer rescue worker and stayed on to volunteer for 9 months. She is the Founder and Director of CTEC which she created after the 2004 Asian disaster.
CTEC is the first and only Tsunami Early-warning Center in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka she also ran a busy field hospital and helped rebuild a village for 3000 people. Since 2001 Alison has been a full time volunteer humanitarian and is fondly known in Sri Lanka as the 'Angel of Galle.
' In 2008 Alison's documentary film called 'The Third Wave'premiered in the Cannes film festival hosted by Sean Penn and Bono. In January 2010, Alison flew to Haiti with actor Sean Penn and ten doctors to help with the earthquake aftermath.
There the volunteers managed an 'Internally Displaced Peoples' camp and field hospital with over 65,000 people. Alison then founded 'We Advance' with Actress Maria Bello which deals with gender based violence in Haiti.
Her new book is called 'The Third Wave- a volunteer story' published by Random House-available world wide. In 2010, Alison was awarded the Order of Australia, the highest civilian medal awarded by Queen Elizabeth the 2nd of England for her volunteer work and her contribution to mankind.
She was also awarded the 'Medal of Excellence' by General Trombitas and the USA Army 82nd Airborne elite. In July of 2012 Alison was appointed the first Ambassador to the Haiti Ministry of the Environment where she is involved with a campaign to help combat reforestation and hunger through the planting of one billion trees for Haiti.
She also continues to work at her We Advance clinic in the Cite Soliel slums. Her hobbies include Argentine tango, fencing, surfing, soccer, cricket, camping, volunteering, piano, chess, poetry, baseball, elephant polo and laughing.
Her favorite TV show is "Survivorman."
