Jillian Kingsford Smith

Jillian is an award-winning journalist who concentrated primarily on business and motoring writing before turning her hand to authoring books in 2012 when she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of 42. Taking Control Compassionately is Jillian’s fourth book. Community and philanthropy are ingrained into Jillian’s spirit and she works with numerous organisations to raise awareness and funds for health and medical research in areas close to her heart. She is immensely proud to be an ambassador for global initiative Kiss Goodbye to MS and also spent two years as the writer in residence for MS Research Australia. Both of these roles have afforded tremendous opportunities, such as speaking at Australia’s Parliament House on World MS Day in 2018 and being invited onto the foundation team of ‘Stop and Reverse MS’ – a global strategic initiative to drastically reduce the time it will take to find a cure for MS from 40 years down to just 10 years via accelerated medical research. All of these experiences have fuelled Jillian’s primary passion; to drive systemic change through story telling. In her ‘spare’ time, she has also written two best-selling books and worked as a ghost-writer. Jillian travels extensively – a great perk of being a speaker and a writer – and something she engineered soon after her diagnosis with MS so she could live life to the fullest.