After graduating from Wellington Teachers' Training College, Dr. Olea Nel started her professional life as a Primary School teacher in Cape Town. She then relocated to Australia, where she obtained a Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics from Monash University (Melbourne) in 1984. The topic of her thesis was: Language, Ethnicity and Social Change: A Sociolinguistic Study of Afrikaans-Speaking Groups in South Africa.

Olea has had a varied professional career teaching English as a second language at a range of tertiary institutions including the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Chisholm Institute of Technology and Canberra University.

After obtaining a post-graduate qualification in Information Studies, she joined the National Library of Australia where her career spanned 15 years. For more than 12 years of that period, she was responsible for training university lecturers and librarians nation-wide. She has written several technical manuals as well as numerous articles on topics related to both librarianship and the Christian life.

Olea has been a dedicated Christian since the age of five. Besides her academic qualifications, she has a Diploma in Theology with a major in Missions from Melbourne Bible College (now Melbourne School of Theology). She is married to Peter Nelson, an ordained minister who has served Christ for over 40 years.

Having retired from her secular position several years ago, she is able to pursue her passion for research in church history and biography. She is presently writing a four-book series on the life of Andrew Murray.