I am an explorer. I explore places. I enjoy driving unreasonably long distances and challenging the impossible. I love to exchange with those who are different, those with another set of convictions. I try to learn about them and then understand what is important to them, why they love, and what they fear, so that I might know what makes us different and the same.

I learned early that big change only happens through small steps. Leaving Iran at twelve, learning German, adapting to a new culture, building a life across six countries and six languages — none of it was possible in one move. It was always small habits that showed up daily. By 2019, preventive medicine had become my personal philosophy — the foundation of everything I believed about health, behaviour and change.

Then came Covid. I stopped operating and spent my days in the ITU instead. Every patient on a ventilator was overweight, unhealthy, or both. And half the staff looking after them were too. It confirmed everything. If we can't prescribe it to ourselves, how do we prescribe it to anyone else?

Small habits. Daily. Lived — not just recommended.

Ali Esmaeili · Plastic Surgeon · Royal Free Hospital · Lecturer at UCL · Trustee, Doctors in Distress

show up first, improve later.™