About the Healthy Sprouts Founder..

My name is Luke, I am a 39 year old Father of three beautiful boys and married to my gorgeous Wife Melinda and we live on the Surf Coast.

Up until very recently (2022), I had spent the last 18 years of my professional life in the Workers Compensation Industry. Which also happened to be where I met Melinda.

I grew up in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne in a big family of six, one of four boys. We loved our basketball growing up. Mum and Dad invested in a small concrete slab being laid out in the backyard and erected a hoop and we spent hundreds if not thousands of hours out there perfecting our craft.

At the age of 15 I became a basketball referee at the local stadium and loved it for two reasons, the fitness and the mentoring qualities. Under 8’s began at 8am on Saturday morning and I was in my element, teaching kids the basics and fundamentals of basketball in a non-competitive environment. Being part of the process of educating them and watching them enjoy the game and grow with confidence each week gave me such a thrill and laid down the mentoring foundations from an early age.

After spending 5 years in the Workers Compensation Industry, I left it all and took 12 months off full time work to study a Certificate IV in Youth Work at Swinburne. During that year I decided to sign up as a volunteer mentor. I was partnered with a wonderful teenage boy and it was one of the most enriching and awakening experiences of my life. I truly came to appreciate the power of mentoring and just how much of a positive influence mentoring can have on kids. Unfortunately my career as a Youth Worker never really took off and I was thrust back into WorkCover with a mortgage to service and bills piling up.. But I had envisioned a very different career path. A career that saw me working with school kids, helping to support and empower them in any way I could. I knew very strongly that one day this vision would eventually come to fruition, but at the right time.

I am thankful that the moment has now arrived to launch Healthy Sprouts, and my mission is to positively impact on as many young kids as I can from here on out.