Gita's story

Hi, my name is Gita. I am the founder of Red Blood Comic.

In 2025, after completing the UNSW Founders Impact X program, I was selected as a recipient of the prestigious Roseus Scholarship from The George Institute for Global Health. The scholarship supports women migrants on their entrepreneurial journey. For me, it has been a beautiful reminder of how far I’ve come since moving to Australia.

I still remember the day I first flew into Sydney. It was 1998, I was 17, and it was the first time I had ever travelled alone. My dad flew with me to Jakarta, where we parted before I continued my journey to Australia, a country I had never lived in. This all followed tumultuous months of political instability in Indonesia, protests, shootings, riots, and, most distressingly, violent discrimination against Chinese‑Indonesian women. Our family decided that it was no longer safe for me to stay, I had to leave.

I joined my brother, who was already in Sydney studying at UNSW. Everything happened fast, from school enrolment, starting a new high school, to arranging a homestay. My parents wanted my brother and me to live separately to help us become more independent and assimilate better to our new environment. Even though I was fluent in English, it still took time to get used to Australian English accent!

Living far from home has its own challenges. This was before video calls. International phone calls were expensive, and so was dial‑up internet. Now, as a parent myself, I can only imagine how hard it must have been for my parents to have all their children overseas.

I completed my Higher School Certificate (HSC) and went on to study at the University of Wollongong, initially enrolling in a Bachelor of Computer Science. I loved programming (and it’s also where I met my future husband), but I later switched to Medical Science when I realised I preferred working in labs with cadavers over computers. My dad, a surgeon, fully supported the change as he had always known I loved medicine. At the time, it was also uncommon for international students to pursue science degrees, which made the decision even more meaningful.

Life moved on. I graduated, got married, and eventually became an Australian citizen to access more opportunities in research. This opened doors for me at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), where I worked my way up from research assistant to preclinical imaging scientist, developing and applying radiotracers. Along the way, we started a family, and I balanced part‑time work with raising our children.

Then, about five years ago, something shifted. Whether you call it a midlife crisis or simply clarity, I knew I wanted to do more. A conversation with my mentor, Dr Kirrily Rule, made me ask myself whether I wanted to be doing the same thing five years from that time. That moment changed everything.

Red Blood Comic – the business I’m now building – is an expression of my love for medicine and the solution I wish I had when studying medical science. Why does medical information have to be so complex and intimidating when it can be engaging, accessible, and easy to understand?

I illustrated my first comic to help a friend understand how low iron was affecting her health. That experience made me realise how wide the gap is between medically trained professionals and the general public. Since then, I’ve been both surprised and deeply concerned by the state of health literacy in Australia and around the world.

As a parent of young children, I also saw how little medical information is created specifically for kids that is clear, accurate, and age‑appropriate. That pushed me to move quickly because the need felt urgent.

It has now been almost a year since I fully committed myself to building Red Blood Comic. The Roseus Scholarship strengthened my connection with The George Institute and helped me build a solid foundation, supporting company setup, IP protection, and the development of both business and creative frameworks.

There is still so much to do and many problems to solve. Being a migrant adds its own layer of challenge. My accent is one of them, and I still rely on tools like ChatGPT and on colleagues to help check my grammar in both writing and speech. But being a migrant also gives me something valuable: empathy for people who don’t speak English as their first language, who live far from home, who never feel completely settled because they belong to more than one place, and who constantly navigate life between cultures.

The entrepreneurial journey is hard, harder for women, and even harder for migrants. But I won’t let that stop me from pursuing my dream. And I hope my story inspires you to pursue yours, too.