I started my education at the age of four in a one-room schoolhouse in Appalachia. At the time, my grandmother was a midwife. She traveled by horse to deliver babies throughout the hollers. She was paid in the form of poultry, produce, or promises. I lived with my grandparents as my mother was very ill with mitral valve disease - a consequence of untreated rheumatic fever. My mother was the first woman to undergo open heart surgery while pregnant (she was pregnant with me). This experience likely formed my love of science and medicine. My grandparents instilled values in me that I carry to this day: overcoming obstacles, a strong work ethic, community service, and the need for respectful, compassionate, and quality health care for all.
I have three degrees - one in zoology from UC Berkeley, another in nursing from UC San Francisco (including public health), and a law degree from University of San Francisco. I attended law school at night while I worked at Kaiser Oakland Hospital as an Infection Control Nurse during the early days of the AIDS epimdemic when there was no known test or treatment. Learnings from that time have informed my work wtih the current COVID-19 pandemic.
I have practiced as an attorney for 32 years, largely as a healthcare attorney: in private practice, as in-house legal counsel for Kaiser, and in-house counsel for UC San Francisco.
I have been a member of the Marin Healthcare District Board since 2011 by appointment, and I was elected in 2012. I have served ever since, and am proud of the work our Board has done in making our new hospital a reality. We are a collaborative and hard-working Board.
I am running to ensure our Board remains a cohesive and productive Board as we have more to accopmlish, and stability is critical at this juncture with a new CEO and our new hopstial. We need to ensure our hospital remains financially healthy so it can continue to serve our residents now and for generations to come. We also need to enhance social determinants of health for all our Marin County residents in terms of services to keep our residents healthy, both in terms of physical and mental health. Central to this work is the need to tackle climate change and to continue our work to end COVID-19. Finally, we need to learn from COVID-19 as pandemics are not going away in our new reality. This will require us to continue our current integration of public health work between our Marin County Public Health Department, our Marin Healthcare District Board, and MarinHealth Medical Center (our new hospital). We can accomplish all these things if we work together to serve our community.
