While I’ve more often experienced a lack of access than not, hindsight affords the realization that it doesn’t take much access to make an impact.  I can barely recall the many things I believed I wanted to do that were not readily accessible to me, yet I can easily articulate my access points–the times a door cracked open and I seized my moment.  

My lack of access was overt, early in life.  Living in urban Oakland, CA, commuting to school in suburban Alameda, CA, until the age of 11, my experience was one where on the street at home, I would be called a “honky” and, at school, I would be called a “n*gger.”  Born to an Italian-American mother and Bahamian-American father, by the time I was 5, my melanin assured noticeable lack of ‘fit’ into an established racial group; that access would not be something granted to me by clearly drawn identity lines.  Often asked “what are you?” by strangers, my mother explained to me, “you have the best of all worlds, not just one.”  I chose to believe in that perspective, as it served me more than the messaging of ‘otherness’ reinforced through society, and it undergirds to this day my identification as a global citizen.  Indeed, many years later, in Uganda, my friend’s father bestowed my nickname, “Namusoke,” which translates as “Rainbow”; a fair representation of how I have come to engage the world. 

With inspiration to provide us with a safe community, good schools, and access to nature, my mother moved my brother and me to Lake Tahoe, in Nevada.  She accepted a new position to manage the employee cafeteria of the town’s only hotel/casino and, just before we were to move into the home she secured for us, we were told there was a delay and we could not move in for several months.  With little money and school starting, mom moved us to the local campground where fees were only $8/day and included a campground site with access to toilets and showers. The three of us would sleep in our tent and, in the morning, shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast at the hotel.  After school, we would return to the hotel to do homework, eat dinner, and at night we would return to the campground where we would learn how to play cards according to casino rules–we loved it.  One day, mom made a mobile camper appear at our campsite through a new acquaintance's generosity, and it had beds.  We were no longer sleeping on the ground or concerned about the growing cold and snow; comparatively, we had just become rich!  That camper felt like magic to me.  Indeed, if you told us at the time we were homeless, it would have missed us entirely!  Knowing that people exist to make a magical moment out of hardship, made all the difference.  My lack of access gave way to access (if only to a warm bed); this and many similar life moments, fueled my lifelong journey of seeking experiences, professional roles, education, and adventures…all moving downstream in the same direction…towards increasing access.

In my small town, we engaged in anything outdoors, hiking, camping, skiing, and swimming.  While we had very little money, that did not matter when our vibe was from communing in nature, such as watching meteor showers.  I did everything that was available and inexpensive in that town, joining the debate and dramatic interpretation team, tennis team, swim team, downhill ski team, cross country ski team, you name it, I tried it. When I wanted to join the Kiwanis Club and was told it was ‘men-only,’ I started a high school chapter of the Kiwanettes Club, ‘women-only,’  to introduce community service programs.  Whether doubtful or trepidatious, I would keep moving forward anyway– because I believed I could.  

Yet, by 14, I somehow felt there was more.  At that time, the library was the equivalent of smartphones today–my life!  During breaks in school you could find me there, and one day I found within a thick 500-page scholarship book, a program where you could live abroad for one year, stay with a family, learn a language and….best news, get a scholarship if you don’t have enough money!  I remember the exact moment I used my lunch money to photocopy the application.  I filled it out carefully, with all of my heart, and when I got to the question: “What will you bring to your host family?” I recall responding “I will bring my smile every day,” because it was all I could think of to offer, and truly all I had.  One day at school, I was called to the Principal’s office over the loudspeaker. When I arrived, my mother was there with a large, previously opened envelope in her hand. She asked: “Did you apply to be an exchange student?...in Switzerland?”  My brave mother could only laugh and sent me off to Switzerland, despite any mother’s angst at such a proposition.

Through American Field Service (AFS), I lived in Neuchatel, Switzerland for one year. While there, I stayed with a host family, learned French, joined the rowing team and rowed in the Venice Vogalonga, traveled to Germany to pay respects in Dachau, went to Paris for the first time, and made lifelong global friends. Today, I’m still in awe that strangers from another country opened their home to accommodate my experience; more people conspiring to increase my access.  After coming back from Switzerland, my worldview had been cracked open and I knew I needed to be global.  I no longer saw the difference between my backyard and someone else’s.  I applied to Tufts University in Massachusetts (Go Jumbos!) and received a full scholarship for attendance at 17.  This, along with my other degrees, contributed to institutional access, the likes of which I had only read about, and now have an appreciation for.  

With a BA in Psychology and English and a Minor in Africa & New World Studies, I found through my studies something that surprised me–I loved data!  I became a researcher and statistician out of college and accordingly pursued a Master of Science in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, a heavily data-driven field for organizational development, at San Diego State University (Go Aztecs!).  

While engaged in study, I found it hard to focus and came across an advertisement for a meditation course that claimed to help with just that.  The Art of Living Foundation introduced me to breathing and meditation practices, for which I contributed to qualitative studies on the efficacy when concerning stress and cortisol reduction.  Today, meditation, breathing, and other holistic practices are core to how I show up personally and professionally.  Meditation, breathing, and other mindfulness techniques have increased my access to myself, to my own intuition, to my alignment, and therefore my capacity to care about what happens to the person next to me or the community across the sea.  These early experiences in staying curious, because I believed I could, led to a 25+ year career fearlessly asking the next question:  how do we increase access for more people to their own health and well-being?

I’ve worked as a biostatistician at UCSD and Emory asking public health questions, managed teams at CDC focused on healthcare IT initiatives, worked with states to compel meaningful use, lobbied to support the establishment of HIEs, sold and managed the delivery of Electronic Health Records across correctional health institutions (I’ve been to a lot of jails and prisons), community health centers and state/Federal entities, stood up telehealth systems, and been at the forefront of new technology like shifting to AWS, data lakes, APIs, machine learning, and NLP.  Across the spectrum, managed care, payor side, provider side, digital health, and public health, all of my contributions were driven by increasing access, whether it be through pushing the needle on telehealth (geographical access), broadband (enabling technology that can close access gaps in healthcare delivery), or translating data to guide better healthcare decisions for patient populations. 

While working, I pursued my Ph.D. in International Development at the University of Southern Mississippi (Go Golden Eagles!), where the applied criteria for the program were well-aligned with someone practiced in the field.  In addition to standard rigorous requirements, we were also expected to attend and present at international conferences, respond to grants, and study abroad, which I took in Costa Rica (“Pura Vida!”).  With a study focus on global health systems, my dissertation concerned itself with why Telehealth fails in some countries and not others (spoiler alert…the pandemic expedited global telehealth adoption).  Again, I had gone back to higher education driven by this question…how can we create more access for more people considering finite resources globally?

Today, with the Sustainable Access Foundation  (SAF), I’m driven to introduce more people to whatever “access” means to them, because I know that without the belief others had in me in my life, I wouldn’t have stayed so curious or felt so safe to be so curious.  A dear friend from Uganda said to me: ‘Success is when the entire community rises together.’  SAF endeavors for this type of success, and for access to be available, whatever that means to the individual or community. 

As I take stock of where I have applied my energy across my life, I acknowledge my core values as freedom, equity, honesty, and growth.  Ideally, we are all free to live within our healthiest selves amongst healthy communities; we can equitably access our own well-being; we are safe to be our authentic selves because no two life paths are the same; and, we can continue to grow and stay curious, safely.  I’ve woven these values into the mission and vision of SAF because I will fight tirelessly, relentlessly, to uphold them. 

My mother died of pancreatic cancer in 2014. Working at restaurants until my brother and I were off in our lives, she then became a teacher, her lifelong passion at the age of 40. For 20+ years she taught 8th grade  (about the ages of 12-14) because she believed ‘our brains are the most open during this time in childhood development’ and she wanted to be a part of that. Mom wanted to help her students to dream big and get curious. So many teachers provide that access every day, that acknowledgment, that nudge, that compassion. Core to SAF is education because well-being includes our application of thought in a meaningful way. That influence is very much still alive and that access I was introduced to is something I will continue to share, both personally and through SAF.  

With decades of watching what access, and lack of it, can accomplish, I’ve observed it to be true that:  even the smallest of access points can make a tremendous difference to the lives we are born into.