ADVOCACY
The Patient Voice Belongs in the Room.
Healthcare decisions are made every day about patients — their safety, their care, their recovery, and their futures. I believe patients and families should have a meaningful voice in the conversations shaping those decisions.
My advocacy is grounded in lived experience, but it is focused on what comes next: safer care, greater transparency and accountability, stronger support after critical illness, and healthcare systems designed with the people who must actually navigate them.
WHY I ADVOCATE
Lived Experience Changed the Questions I Ask.
My advocacy did not begin as a professional ambition. It began as a patient.
After surviving septic shock and experiencing the long road of surgeries, limb loss, reconstruction, rehabilitation, and recovery that followed, I began to understand healthcare from a perspective I never expected to have.
Survival showed me something important: the patient experience does not begin and end with a diagnosis, a procedure, or a hospital discharge.
It includes the questions people did not know to ask. The information they did not know they needed. The decisions families are expected to make under extraordinary circumstances. The physical and emotional consequences that can continue long after the immediate crisis has passed.
Those experiences now inform the issues I choose to speak about and the changes I want to help advance.
WHAT I ADVOCATE FOR
Turning Experience Into Action.
TRANSPARENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY
Patients Deserve Information They Can Actually Use.
Healthcare information may technically exist while still being extraordinarily difficult for the average patient or family to find, understand, or connect.
I advocate for greater transparency and meaningful access to information that can help patients make informed decisions about their care.
Transparency only creates empowerment when people can understand and use what they are given.
DISABILITY & LIFE AFTER CRITICAL ILLNESS
Disability is not a footnote to a survival story.
Patients who leave critical illness with limb loss, mobility changes, chronic symptoms, cognitive changes, or other lasting consequences deserve healthcare and communities that recognize both their challenges and their continued potential.
I want this section to reflect dignity and adaptation — not pity.
I want survivorship and recovery to receive the same intentional attention we give acute treatment.
SEPSIS AWARENESS
Sepsis awareness saves lives.
But the conversation cannot stop at survival.
I advocate for greater awareness of both the urgency of sepsis and the realities many survivors and families face afterward —
including prolonged recovery, disability, rehabilitation, emotional trauma, changes in family life, and rebuilding a life that may look very different from the one that existed before.
Surviving sepsis can be the beginning of another journey — one that deserves greater recognition, research, resources, and support.
PATIENT VOICE, INNOVATION & AI
Innovation Should Be Built With Patients, Not Just For Them.
As healthcare increasingly embraces artificial intelligence and digital tools, patient voice becomes even more important.Technology can help people understand and navigate healthcare, but trust, transparency, accessibility, privacy, safety, and real-world usability must be part of the design from the beginning.
Patients and caregivers should have a seat at the table when healthcare technology is being imagined, developed, tested, and evaluated.
PATIENT SAFETY
Safer Care Starts With Informed Patients.
Patients should be empowered to ask questions, understand risks, research their care, and participate meaningfully in decisions affecting their health.
Patient engagement should not be treated as an obstacle to care. It should be recognized as part of safer care.
SURVIVORSHIP & RECOVERY
Discharge Is Not the Finish Line.
For many people who survive critical illness, leaving the hospital is the beginning of an entirely new phase of care.
Recovery may involve rehabilitation, specialists, new disabilities, medical equipment, medication changes, mental health support, caregiving, financial pressures, and learning how to navigate everyday life again.
FROM PATIENT VOICE TO SYSTEM CHANGE
Lived Experience is Expertise.
Patients and survivors are often invited to tell their stories. Storytelling matters, but patient engagement should not end when the story is over.
Lived experience can contribute to healthcare education, research, policy conversations, technology development, patient-safety initiatives, clinical programs, conference programming, and organizational strategy.
I want to help move patient engagement from simply being heard to meaningfully helping shape what happens next.
THE WORK TODAY
Advocacy In Action
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I share my journey through septic shock and its ongoing aftermath, highlighting the need for sepsis education, survivor support, and care that continues beyond discharge.
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I speak about helping patients understand their care, ask informed questions, and make their voices heard, especially when medical jargon and gaps in communication leave them feeling unprepared.
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Through honest storytelling and lessons from the bedside, I help audiences understand patient experiences, hidden disabilities, life after amputation, and the power of compassionate communication.
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I bring the patient perspective into conversations about research, policy, and care delivery, helping organizations understand what patients and families need throughout their healthcare journey.
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I explore how technology and responsible AI can support patient education and healthcare navigation while keeping safety, privacy, accessibility, and human connection at the center.
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I collaborate with organizations to strengthen sepsis awareness, amplify survivor voices, and advance education that reflects the realities of patients and caregivers.escription
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I share how my lived experience inspired Phoenix Health Compass and Phoenix Navigator, platforms designed to help people choose care, navigate their healthcare journey, and become more informed participants in their care.
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Drawing from my book, Through the Ashes, I speak candidly about survival, identity, family, and rebuilding a life while turning painful experiences into purpose and advocacy.
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I bring a candid survivor and advocate perspective to conversations about sepsis, healthcare disparities, hidden disabilities, and the lasting impact of medical trauma, making room for stories that often go unheard.
COLLABORATION
Bring the Patient Voice Into the Conversation.
I welcome opportunities to collaborate with healthcare organizations, patient-safety leaders, researchers, nonprofits, technology companies, policymakers, conference organizers, media, and others working to improve healthcare.
I am particularly interested in opportunities involving:
ADVISORY BOARDS
CONFERENCES
PATIENT ENGAGEMENT
HEATHCARE EDUCATION
SEPSIS AWARENESS
RESEARCH
HEALTHCARE INNOVATION
MEDIA
PATIENT SAFETY
ADVOCACY PARTHERSHIPS
LET’S WORK TOGETHER
Better Healthcare Requires More Than Listening to Patients.
My experience began with survival. My advocacy is about what we choose to do with what we learn from patients, survivors, and families afterward.