Meet your Research Storyteller/Secret Weapon

Hi! I’m Cally Kent - an Occupational Therapist researcher and writer who also happens to be your social strategist, research curator, personal brand and copywriting coach.

I created Research Storyteller for the overworked and overwhelmed Occupational Therapist who recognises the benefits of a social media presence for their practice and career - but doesn’t know where to start, what they can share without breaking any guidelines or how to grow an online community while still doing all their actual OT work (those reports do not write themselves!)

A little about me: In the final year of my PhD as I was writing my thesis - and with a new baby to provide excellent procrastination excuses - I decided to start a mini-blog on Instagram to keep me accountable and connect with other PhD and early career researcher mums. It really worked - I finished my thesis, got great comments from my examiners, published articles from it and made friends all over the world who had similar personal and professional interests. What I didn’t realise was that by consistently showing up and sharing about my research I was also slowly building a personal brand and growing a community.

Other OTs and therapists asked me how I was doing this and to help them with their own social media marketing strategies for their practices or careers, and I created a model (‘cause we love a good model for practice, right?) and a workshop to present at conferences both in Australia and overseas. Unfortunately, due to the unforeseen COVID-19 travel disruptions I was unable to present as planned at my first international conference - I was so disappointed - but the silver-lining/any-problem-can-be-solved OT in me took that workshop and adapted it for online - and here we are!