Welcome! My name is Dr Maria Phalime. I'm a medical doctor, award-winning author and speaker.
When I graduated from medical school in 1999 I had achieved my childhood dream. It had been a tough road to get there - I grew up in a working class home in the South African township of Soweto during the bad old days of apartheid. I had to work hard and make sacrifices in order to make it through medical school. When I started working as a doctor, however, I became disillusioned and I felt I couldn't make the kind of difference I had envisaged. So, in 2004 I dared to walk away from medicine. My memoir about that journey, titled Postmortem- The Doctor Who Walked Away, won the City Press Nonfiction Award and has been widely acclaimed as an important commentary on the challenges that doctors face in the public health system.
I believe we are all born to thrive, irrespective of where we come from or what we look like. I write and speak to help other professionals to thrive in work and life