Alumni Profiles

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Alison is a Clinical Education Specialist and Clinical Instructor at Virginia Mason Medical Center. Her responsibilities include systems management of the VMMC nursing community, coordinating and instructing UW BSN clinical groups, and project development and implementation for VMMC quality & safety projects related to nursing education (high risk med checks, safe patient handling, med administration survey, contrast reaction emergency response, fall prevention). She has also supported professional development by developing a Medical-Surgical residency program, teaching a preceptor class, working individually with staff to achieve career goals, following new hires on 2 units, and coordinating Nurse Technicians. Alison coordinates all coordinate all SoN student placements and faculty on-boarding to the hospital.

Alison was born in Rhode Island and got her undergraduate degree in Anthropology. She joined the Peace Corps in Panama with her husband after graduation and lived in a remote indigenous village for the next 2 ½ years. It was there that she developed an interest in nursing and community health by working on local and regional nutrition, sanitation and maternal/child health. She continued working with Latinos on public health issues upon her return and subsequently came to the UW nursing program.

Subspecialty
Occupational and Environmental Health

While earning her BA at Willamett University, Allison studied anthropology and Spanish and became interested in cross cultural health, underserved populations, and health disparities. This led her to enter community health and occupational health nursing through the MEPN program in Seattle.

Subspecialty
Community of Youth

Allison is a Clinical Nursing Instructor at SPU, and a staff nurse at HMC.

Allison is originally from Portland, Oregon but has been living in Seattle since 2001. After finishing her BSN, she worked in med-surg both in Seattle and in New York City. She has recently worked in Burn ICU and Pediatric ICU at Harborview.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Anna is from a small town in Vermont where she had been working in family practice. She spent five years of middle and high school at an international school in northern India which provided her with good hiking skills and a deep interest in small scale health improvement projects.

After graduating from college Anna started working in the community where she spent most of her childhood, helping a rural population of pregnant women, young single mothers, families with young children, elders, and adolescents primarily around behavioral issues. As she became more involved in organizational issues, education, care coordination, and more frustrated with the inability to work on quality improvement and community initiatives (because they were so busy patching together services in day to day practice), Anna decided she needed to learn more and get a more comprehensive understanding of what was preventing the delivery of better preventative care. In March of 2007 she started work with a project funded by USAID and run by Dartmouth Medical School creating and implementing a family medicine (primary care) based antenatal care model for use in Kosovo.

Anna believes in education, prevention, community development, primary family based care. She was in the first cohort of DNP students in CHN and graduated in 2010.

Subspecialty
Occupational and Environmental Health

Ayelet (pronounced I Yell it) moved from Southern California to Seattle last year to enroll in the UW Master’s Entry Program in Nursing (MEPN). She earned her bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego and, after working in community clinics for a couple years, knew she wanted to be a Community Health Nurse in order to a) work towards social justice and b) avoid the hospital.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural and Occupational and Environmental Health

Beth is a Health Services Supervisor at the Seattle King County Dept. of Public Health. She supervises and manages a variety of programs at the Columbia Health Center, including obstetrics program, Maternity Support Services and Infant Case Management, as well as the WIC program.

Born and raised in the Seattle area, Beth worked as a clinic and public health nurse for SKCDPH at a community clinic in the Rainier Valley. Her interests are primarily working in Maternal and Child Health in the community health setting and with the Latino population. She is very interested in chronic disease and health disparities, and access to health care in underserved populations.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Bethany Rolfe began a career in nursing as a CNA at the age of 16. After graduating from Seattle Pacific University with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing, she began working in a community health clinic in north Seattle.This work sparked her passion for community health and serving the underserved.

After earning her Master’s of Science degree in Nursing and completing the Family Nurse Practitioner Program at the Seattle Pacific University, she moved to Costa Rica where she volunteered in a clinic in one of the poorest barrios in San Jose. La Clinica de la Carpio serves Nicaraguan immigrants, a population with incredible health disparities because they are unable to access healthcare through the Costa Rican health plan. After 7 months, she returned to Seattle and joined Sea Mar Community Health Centers where she is often the sole medical provider at the White Center clinic.

She started the Doctor of Nursing Practice program in Community Health Systems in Fall, 2009 and graduated in Spring, 2011.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Betsy finished five years of travel nursing in which she had the opportunity to live and work in various cities across the US, including Hawaii. She fell in love with Seattle while on assignment here and decided to relocate from Ohio and attend the UW SON. In the CHN program, Betsy learned how she can confront the childhood obesity epidemic and improve the health of children affected by overweight/obesity.

Subspecialty
Healthy Aging

Betty grew up in Seattle, earned her diploma RN in Michigan, returned to Seattle in 1979, and entered the BSN degree program at UW Bothell in 1996. She has worked as an RN for 29 years and now works at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance as a research nurse. Prior to her current job, Betty worked at DSHS as a nursing care consultant for nursing homes in King County for many years.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Bria is a Jewish baby boomer born in Brooklyn, New York at the end of 1947. The time of her arrival positioned her well to experience the civil rights movement, the anti (Vietnam) war movement, the women’s movement and to become very interested in improving the health care system in this country. She worked, and loved, inpatient adult and pediatric rehab for seven years before heading out of the hospital. Her big break came when in 1987, armed with great passion and no managerial experience, she was hired to manage the International District Community Health Center in Chinatown. Immigrants and refugees have been the focus of her career since then. She has been at Harborview since 1993 where she supervises the Community House Calls program. She also directs the Dareyl Project, a weekly yoga and health program for Somali women at Harborview, which grew out of her master’s scholarly project.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Christine is from Corpus Christi, Texas. She graduated with a BSN from Oklahoma Baptist University. After graduating, she lived in the Philippines, her family’s home country, to research the utilization of women’s reproductive health programs, funded by a U.S. Fulbright Student grant. She has several interests: adolescent and women’s issues, cross-cultural nursing, program development, international nursing education, and health care disparities. She has worked at a hospital in Corpus Christi in the Quality Management department, focusing on performance improvement projects, and most recently, helping the hospital prepare for the Joint Commission accreditation process. This hospital experience reinforced her desire to learn about improving health care delivery at a systems level, leadership, and policy development.

She completed her post-MN DNP program at the University of Washington School of Nursing in January 2012. She accepted a position as Diversity Network Director with the Washington Center for Nursing. The Diversity Initiative is one of the recommendations of the Master Plan for Nursing Education, which was published in 2008 to address the state-wide nursing shortage. Christine is responsible for partnering with key stakeholders to promote diversity in the WA State nursing workforce. Her first task is to develop and launch an online mentoring network for racial/ethnic minority nursing students and new graduates.

Deborah graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in nursing in 1979. She entered the Community Health program as a way to improve the health of populations through program and policy development.

Subspecialty
Community of Youth

Originally from Vancouver, B.C., Elizabeth finished her undergraduate degree in nursing from the University of Victoria. Elizabeth worked in the Nurse Family Partnership Program, in Everett where, working with pregnant and parenting first time teen mothers. Her area of focus in the CHN program was youth, and she learned about health promotion programs focused on this population. She learned about the factors that influence high risk youth in making risky behavior choices. She is interested in nursing education and also working abroad. She worked as a clinic instructor at the Northwest University overseeing nursing students at their clinical placement in public health shortly after she graduated from the CHN program.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Emily spent most of her life in Oregon and Washington, with about 5 years spent living and traveling outside the United States. She graduated from OHSU, at their satellite nursing school in Ashland, Oregon.

Subspecialty
Community of Youth

Jane graduated from Pacific Lutheran University with BSN in 2004 and has worked as a med-surg nurse for two years. Her main interests are in improving the health of children and adolescents. As she interacted with people from various backgrounds, it became salient to her that physical and mental health issues people face as adults did not occur over night. But rather, most health issues are a result of accumulation of choices/habits and environmental exposures that began in the younger years. So her passion in public health is to tend to the health needs of underserved youths.

Subspecialty
Build-Your-Own: Policy

Janelle is Practice Manager for Pacific Medical Centers in Lynnwood, WA. She was part of the 2005 entering class of the CHN program. She received her undergraduate degree in comparative religion here at UW and focused her study on early Christian history. She was a graduate of the inaugural class of the Masters Entry Program in Nursing (MEPN) at the UW School of Nursing. Janelle discovered a niche for planning, leadership, and collaboration through many faith-based seminars and retreats and decided to direct those abilities toward health promotion and disease prevention in Community Health Systems Nursing.

In her current job, Janelle is responsible for the service line profitability and clinical performance standards. Key areas include financial performance, business development and service line daily operations, and day-to-day back office clinical operations of the site or service lines. She manages clinical staff coverage and coordinates care within the back office team to facilitate the provider/patient interaction. She is also responsible for the meeting performance expectations in the areas of financial performance, quality care, service excellence, access, and resource utilization in her area of responsibility, which includes multiple service lines within the clinic site.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Jeanesse is originally from the Seattle area but has lived in multiple places throughout her life. She received her BSN from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma in 2003 and shortly thereafter moved to Baltimore MD where she began her nursing career. During her 4 years there, she worked in internal medicine/telemetry and neuro critical care. While in nursing school and throughout her nursing career, Jeanesse was involved in medical volunteer work mostly in the Dominican Republic (also in Ecuador). This volunteer work was heavily public health focused in the extremely remote areas of the country involving health teaching and health promotion. Through these experiences she developed a stronger desire to enter the public/community health field and try to make a difference in minimizing health disparities throughout the world.

Jeanesse was in the first cohort of DNP students in CHN and received her degree in 2010.

Subspecialty
Community of Youth

Julia is a Clinic Manager for Puget Sound Neighborhood Health Centers, Rainier Park Medical Center.

Originally from the UK, Julia started her career there and then traveled to the United Arab Emirates to work in peds units and specialty clinics, where she met her husband. They returned to the UK and after about 5 years became restless again and went to help build a hospital and school of nursing in Beirut, Lebanon. Following a family tragedy, they came to Seattle to support their extended family. Julia has a particular interest in health education for all and a love working with multiple cultures.

Subspecialty
Occupational and Environmental Health

Julie was born in Kalispell, MT and grew up in Chico, CA before moving up to the Pacific NW for school. Her first degree—an unexpected, but worthwhile detour on her way to nursing—was a BA in Spanish from the University of Oregon. She subsequently earned her BSN from the University of Washington and went on to work as an RN in the ED and as an Instructor/Trainer/Curriculum Developer for the Becoming Parents Program (www.becomingparents.com). After earned her MN degree, Julie worked as a clinical instructor at the UW School of Nursing. She began her new position in January 2011 to launch an employee health promotion program at at Northern Arizona Healthcare in Flagstaff, AZ.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Kathleen has worked in Oncology/Bone Marrow Transplant, NICU, Pediatric ICU, general pediatrics with drug addicted newborns and as a nurse in the correctional system. Internationally she has worked in Nicaragua and in Uganda with Medicines Sans Frontiers. The program allowed her to further develop her training in research and epidemiology as it applies to ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in population health.

Subspecialty
Occupational and Environmental Health

Kelli was born in Nashville, Tennessee. After earning a B.S. in biology and ecology from the University of Tennessee, she spent five years traveling back and forth to Glacier National Park where she worked as a park ranger and boat captain during the summers. Kelli then decided to pursue a nursing career and obtained her education at the University of San Diego in 2004. She worked for three years in San Diego on a med/surg/oncology unit. While working as a floor nurse, she became concerned about the wastes being generated in the hospital setting and their effects on the environment & public health. After some soul-searching, she decided to continue her education in the OEHN program here at the UW. Kelli worked as an endoscopy & ambulatory procedure nurse when she lived in Seattle. She starts her career as nursing instructor at Flathead Valley Community College in 2010.

Subspecialty
Occupational and Environmental Health

Kristy received her BSN from the University of San Francisco in 2000 and began her career in that fabulous city as a pediatric oncology nurse. She spent a few years working as a travel nurse and eventually settled here in Seattle. Kristy is excited about being a part of nursing’s presence in the Community Health/Public Health arena. She wants to pursue her interests in policy and environmental health and make a difference in the “bigger picture” of heath.

Subspecialty
Community of Youth

Born in the Philippines, Leah considers herself a Seattle local. She received her BSN from Seattle University in 2002 and was working at the UWMC while pursuing her master's in community health nursing at UW. Leah believes nurses are in great positions to make progressive changes in the health of communities and populations.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Leslie grew up in rural Montana and moved to the Seattle area in 1988. Nursing is her second career. Most of her nursing career has been spent working in Diabetes Education and chronic illness care, both individual and population-based. Currently, Leslie is the Program Coordinator/Supervisor of the Diabetes & Nutrition Program at Providence Everett Medical Center.

Subspecialty
Occupational & Environmental Health

Linda is an Occupational Health Nurse Educator at Group Health Cooperative. Her job includes program management of flu shots and other worksite health events, health education projects, and consulting with workplaces about their wellness programs and health services.

Linda grew up in New Jersey. Moving to Utah to go to college, Linda got interested in the impact of our environments on our personalities and outlooks. She earned a degree in Sociology, then went back to school to become a nurse. Linda chose occupational health as her specialty area because it involves some sociology and psychology, but it also brings one into contact with many different types of people.

Subspecialty
Occupational and Environmental Health

Luiza moved from Romania in Seattle area with her husband and daughter. Since falling love with beautiful Pacific Northwest, Luiza's family decided to establish their permanent residence here, where Luiza could continue her professional career in public health which she started many years ago in Bucharest. Luiza was trained and worked in Romania as an MD Specialist in Public Health and Management, being mainly involved in projects aimed at reforming the Romanian health system. After thoroughly researching of the local health system, she realized that nursing was the best way to pursue her interests. She graduated from BCC, and applied for the CHN master program. Luisa wishes to contribute to improving the health of the population at least at local level.

Subspecialty
Occupational and Environmental Health

Marti worked in the UW Medical Center’s cardiothoracic floor before entering the Community Health program.

She is especially interested in having the opportunity to impact the health and well-being of her fellows in the healthcare industry. Her particular interest is in short-term overseas work with particular emphasis on India/Sri Lanka. Martha says, "why there? Well, I made a promise to one of my favorite patients who asked that I remember the people of India when I was considering where in the world I would want to volunteer my training and skills. I have been headed for India ever since."

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Michelle is from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. As a child, her family lived in New Guinea and traveled to many other places over the years. She has always been surrounded by multicultural populations and loves being able interact with them. She works in a local hospital and does some teaching at a local college. Michelle was in the first cohort of DNP students in CHN and graduated in 2010.

Subspecialty
Occupational Health Nursing

Noreen is System Manager of Occupational Health and Safety for Providence Health Systems Headquarters. She has been a CCU nurse, worked at an infusion clinic for AIDS patients, and has worked with cancer patients. Noreen focused on Occupational Health Nursing for her master's training. Today Noreen uses program and policy development in her 4 areas of responsibility at Providence-workers compensation, occupational health, safety, and infection control. "My program at the UW wan an excellent preparatory environment for this job I have now. I came out well prepared, had ample opportunity for dialogue, and the professors were always available."

Click here to view the video interview. (See Help/Viewing Requirements)

Subspecialty
Community of Youth

Rebecca has been a nurse for more than 20 years. She has practiced in many specialty areas including ER, ICU, community mental health, hospice, home health, and school health. Her school nurse experiences and networking with other school nurses around the state has lead to her interest in policy and program development of health promotion for children in school.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Robin has been interested in health disparities since he was in high school. While working on his first degree in Anthropology, Robin saw huge disparities among people with disabilities. He found that nursing and the CHN program could help him address these disparities. Robin was the Director of Program Development for the American Lung Association of Washington. He is currently in the PhD program in the School of Nursing at UW.

Click here to view the video interview.(See Help/Viewing Requirements)

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Robin is a Staff Nurse in high risk labor and delivery, working on culturally sensitive care for obstetric clients. She is interested in health care disparities, gender studies, women’s health care, interpersonal violence, barriers to healthcare and transcultural nursing. She also enjoys teaching. Robin has been a registered nurse since she was 20 years old. After studying cultural anthropology, she decided to earn her baccalaureate degree in nursing at the University of Washington, Bothell campus. She views her academic pursuits as way to give back to her community by learning to give culturally competent and socially just care to marginalized populations and individuals.

She is currently enrolled in the PhD program in the School of Nursing.

Siobhan (pronounced "Chevon") was born in Belfast Northern Ireland and came here with her family at age 12. Even though Ireland and the US share a common language it was still a difficult adjustment. She is full of respect for the people that come to this country as immigrants.

After receiving an ADN in Frederick Maryland and then a BSN at Texas Women's University in Dallas, Siobhan worked a variety of hospital specialties (pediatrics, obstetrics, and now the emergency room). For several years she worked travel contracts and traveled all over the US. Siobhan’s interests range from health care disparities and health care policy to infectious diseases and global health.

Subspecialty
Build-You-Own: Maternal and Infant Health

Stephanie finished her undergraduate degree at USF in 2001 and spent three years in San Francisco working ER and ICU. In 2004 she volunteered with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps as a public health nurse in Yakima WA, fell in love, got engaged, and decided Washington was home. She worked as a public health nurse in Yakima. Stephanie chose the CHN program because "...I want to improve people's access to quality health care."

Subspecialty
Occupational and Environmental Health

Suzanne is an Infection control nurse coordinator for Harborside-Arden House in Hamden, Ct. She is accountable for the development and execution of all examiner field standards and requirements, field training, and quality control.

Subspecialty
Occupational and Environmental Health

Suzette received a BSN from Brigham Young University. Her volunteer work for the Red Cross sparked her interest in community health and disaster preparedness. She is an Employee Health Nurse Coordinator for Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, Utah. She coordinates employee health services for over 100 clinics across the state of Utah. Her roles involve policies and program development and implementation, education, training, case management, exposure investigation and tracking, consultation, and counseling for work restrictions and infectious disease.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Tamara is an Education Specialist at Virginia Mason Medical Center. She coordinates the 12 week RN residency program for new graduate nurses who have taken positions in telemetry, IMC or CCU. Tamara lived in France for a year and worked at the French Red Cross in the intake area/hygiene station, doing community health in French. A first generation Ukrainian-American, she cherishes her cultural traditions and speaks Ukrainian and Russian. She hopes to use those languages for health promotion and health care delivery and her training in cross-cultural community health nursing to enhance culturally competent nursing care.

Tamara moved out to the Pacific Northwest from Washington, DC to attend the UW. She practiced most types of bedside nursing as well as some research and international work. Tamara's interests include preventative health care for communities, women's health (specifically immigrants and refugees), international health and nursing education both in the US and abroad, into rewarding professional endeavors.

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Teresa is Program Manager at the Cancer Information Service for the grant Spirit of Eagles: The American Indian and Alaskan Native Leadership Initiative on Cancer. She came to the community health nursing program as an oncology hospice nurse. Teresa wanted to apply her skills to the advantage of communities. She spent her community health clinical in the Nooksack tribal community in Snohomish County and under her current job is able to combine her oncology nursing skills and her community health nursing skills in serving Native communities by carrying out leadership initiatives under the grant. "I received a lot of education and mentoring and actually being prepared to go out and work with a diverse community. The curriculum is laid out step by step-there's a lot of support and mentoring along the way." In addition to her full-time job, she returned to UW and completed her post-MN DNP education in Spring 2010.

Click here to view the video interview. (See Help/Viewing Requirements)

Subspecialty
Cross-Cultural

Sarah came to Seattle from San Francisco. As someone who emigrated from China about ten years before starting the Community Health program, Sarah is interested in serving minorities and new immigrants.