Following my European adventures I returned home and joined the board of the Auckland Refugee Council to fight for the doubling of our refugee quota. Simultaneously, I worked at hospitals around the country, wanting to follow in the footsteps of my mentor, John Windsor. Somewhere along the way, I also had the pleasure of working in Mongolian hospitals, travelling over 2,500 kilometres in the Gobi Desert from one clinic to another. The great bond that I established with the people of Mongolia led me to seek ways to help increase access to medicine and surgery for the locals, but this was easier said than done. I realised that as a doctor I did not possess enough technical skills to launch, fund, and run a large-scale organisation. I was only able to care for my patients one-to-one but in order to make a system-wide change I had gaps in my knowledge that I needed to bridge. This is what led me to take a break from medicine and go to business school at the George Washington University. I was lucky to receive a Fulbright scholarship for my MBA and even luckier to spend two years in Washington DC.