I remember my parents asking me at age 16 what I wanted to do after I graduated high school and at the time I had no clue. I went on to study piano performance in Montreal and then business in New York City, but after graduating with two degrees, I STILL did not know what I wanted to do. When the events surrounding 9/11 made it difficult to renew my work US work permit, I to moved back to Canada and got a job working in radio and television.
After I gave birth to my daughter, I knew that I did not want to stay in media. My daughter has many healthcare challenges and it was too weird for me to show up at work making decisions related to trendy shoes or what someone was wearing on television and the next day go to the hospital and see children and their families suffering. I became a family advisor at the hospital and at the time, I didn't know why I had chosen to spend time away from my family to engage with hospital staff. I think part of me was trying to make sense of our strange healthcare systems in Canada. Everything about healthcare seemed like it was from another planet. The language, the red tape, the formalities, addressing only body parts vs the whole person, ignoring pain symptoms, and this 'evidence-based thing' that everyone seemed to keep droning on about...
Now, decades later, I have left my full-time job in the corporate world and I FINALLY know what I want to do when I grow up...I want to work in healthcare engagement! For me, this means shaping the process of helping people with lived experience work with healthcare practitioners, researchers and administrators to solve the problems that we are facing in healthcare today.
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