I am an internist, geriatrician and palliative care physician. I doctor, teach, write and advocate at the intersections between health, the criminal justice system, and human rights. I created Families United for Freedom to address the new challenges to constitutional rights and personal autonomy following the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Our goal is to prioritize state ballot initiatives to win back freedom for American women.
My clinical work is primarily with justice-involved elders, especially people who are recurrently incarcerated in the final decades of their lives. I am also a research fellow at the Institute to End Mass Incarceration. Throughout the pandemic, I have written and thought a lot about the impact that COVID-19 is having in jails, prisons, and on our individual lives and collective well-being.
I studied History at Brown University and completed medical training at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and the Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I am a writer, communicator, political advisor, and strategist. For almost two decades, I’ve worked closely with public officials and political candidates to craft strategic messages that connect with voters across the political spectrum in some of the most challenging political environments in the county.
I served as communications director for the Kansas attorney general and later for Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas. Most recently, I served as communications director and spokesperson for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom – the coalition that secured a historic landslide victory for reproductive rights in August 2022.
I live in Kansas, with my husband and kids. I studied journalism and religious studies at the University of Kansas and strategic communications at Columbia University.