I was born and raised in Delaware and moved to Portland in 2000 to go to graduate school. My husband and I liked Portland so much that we decided to stay here and make it our home. I knew I wanted to practice medicine at a fairly young age, mostly because I had lost my mother to breast cancer at age 12. I wanted to help people stay healthy, help those who were ill get better, and help family members of those who were ill. During my sophmore year of college, I realized I wanted to be a physician assistant. That happened after meeting several physician assistants at a hospital I was volunteering at. I talked to physicians who said that if they could do it all again, they would have become a PAs. After college, I moved to Arizona and worked for the University of Arizona Rural Health Mobile Clinic. This was an amazing experience and opened my eyes to the world of community health and helping those who are uninsured and underinsured. I think it was there where my interest in being a primary care clinician was piqued. I really liked getting to know the people I was seeing. In 2000, I enrolled in the physician assistant program at Pacific University in Forest Grove. During my program, we had lecturers who were clinicians at Kaiser Permanente and I had the opportunity to do a couple of my clinical rotations at Kaiser Permanente. I really like Kaiser Permanente's focus on prevention, the community it served, its integrated health care system, and its use of technology. When I was getting ready to graduate from my physician assistant program, I interviewed for a position in primary care. I was fortunate to get the job, and I have been here ever since.