MEET THE FOUNDER
AMANDA ROBERTS, PHD

At end of my life only one question will matter. "Did I love well?" PRISE afterall, when distilled to its essence, is a story about LOVE.

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We live in a world of injustice, racism, intractable violence and hatred. Wars and conflict are the legacy of these evils and at the root of all of them resides trauma, lust for power, and for many, the experience of marginalization and injustice. Untreated trauma and its accompanying injustice is the engine that drives them. As the daughter of the former Chief Justice of Hong Kong and Brunei Sir Denys Roberts, I stand for a particular kind of justice.

 

Distributive justice concerns itself with the equal and fair distribution of resources, healthcare, clean water and all that is good in our human global village. My humanitarian activities revolve around the goal of providing access to quality trauma treatment, resiliency, and wellness education as an attempt to give back to a world that has blessed me so abundantly. I take the view that the function of having been endowed with privilege and luck, is to contribute to the restorative justice movement in an attempt to address the health inequity so prevalent in our world.

 

However, despite my many blessings, life has dealt me some harsh lessons and I have endured my own special brand of adversity with almost a decade of a severe neurological and intractable chronic pain syndrome, the demise of a long-term marriage to a decent and kind man, the loss of a professional community and a decades long dream, the loss of a son and the near loss of a beloved daughter. I began my life again from nothing at the age of sixty. These hardships became the crucible from which PRISE was forged and where grief was transformed into a gift for the world.

 

I am a general aviation student pilot and an aspiring disciple of flight, a mother, staunch friend, dedicated Transcendental Meditator, lifelong athlete and a passionate humanitarian. I am a volunteer for LIGA International/Flying Doctors of Mercy and once operations resume, I will volunteer my time for medical missions to provide relief in communities in Mexico where LIGA International/Flying Doctors is their only available source of medical care.

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I love my work and regard it as a sacred calling, not merely a job. I was put on the planet to do this work.

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I am an outdoors woman and find solace in nature and its miracles and since the age of eight years old have nurtured an abiding fascination in quantum physics and astronomy; these disciplines represent the study of the very small and the very large. They fascinate me and speak to the underlying mystery of our existence. I view science as the language of the divine and find no conflict between the deepest of spiritual truths and the ordered arrangement of the universe.

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I believe in living life as fearlessly as I am able, with compassion and deep integrity.

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Friends would describe me as bubbly, humorous, audacious at times and somewhat irreverent. I am committed to loyalty and taking the high road, even when it is difficult and met with criticism. I have an abiding sense of the absurd, and I try to laugh at myself as often as I can muster. I am, after all, in the grand scheme of this human drama, unimportant, and know this to be true.