Our Community

 Ms Eliza Li, (’15) 

‘Charity is the one thing that starts at home, but never stops there; an act of kindness without any expectation in return; the giving of hope in the tiniest of gestures; and forever the blood that binds our brotherhood across our family that we call our human race.’ 

Eliza seeks to continuously give-back to underprivileged communities around the world. She volunteers and raises funds for Maharlika Charity Foundation, helping serve indigent communities through medical missions and free surgical care as a surgical scrub nurse. During her studies Eliza also volunteered at the Melbourne University Health Initiative, managing projects that redistributed surplus medical supplies from Melbourne to under resourced health facilities abroad. 

Eliza graduated from Ruyton with an ATAR score over 99 and a study score of 50 in Biology. Only two years after graduating, Eliza became a dedicated Bachelor of Biomedicine/Commerce student and received the Scholarship for Excellence, Vallejo Gantner Memorial Travel Scholarship and Entrepreneurship Ambassador Scholarship from Monash University. Eliza used her academic success to pursue extracurricular opportunities that contribute to the health of our global community. Her research article on exploitative health supplements, published in The Conversation Australia, was nominated for best presentation at the 2017 International Conference for Undergraduate Research, featured in the 2017 newsletter of Friends of Science in Medicine and was cited by the Medical Journal of Australia. Eliza’s passion towards contributing to medical research also earned her a scholarship supported placement, as a cancer research student, at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research. For her enthusiasm beyond the classroom, Eliza was also selected by the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies as one of the 42 Australians to study the public health challenges in Indonesia in 2017. 

Eliza has returned to Ruyton to inspire our girls by speaking at the Year 11 leadership camp, assemblies and running VCE Biology workshops. During her years at Ruyton Eliza was an acutely engaged student and reflects that, ‘I’m most proud of my Ruyton heritage because our supportive community really gave me my confidence, instilled in me this work ethic and showed me that we can truly do anything.’ 

Eliza continues to motivate young girls as a success blogger and founder of Reach-In Education. Launched in 2018, Reach-In was the first entrepreneurial experience programme for girls in Melbourne’s high schools. Eliza workshops how to launch a start-up and helps the girls create their own opportunities.