March 25, 2025 - Interview by Kristin Trent 

Without love in the dream, it’ll never come true. – The Grateful Dead 

You grew up in small-town Idaho where the closest doctor was 40 minutes away. How did your childhood inform your path to medical school? 

I went to medical school to take care of rural people, but I always had an idea that I wanted to go into surgery because it could immediately address the problem. I grew up in a super small town in the middle of the mountains and remember how few and far between doctor’s visits were for everyone. Living in such an isolated place compelled me to want to provide excellent care to underserved communities. 

When I went to medical school at the University of Nebraska, there were thirteen counties in Nebraska without a single doctor. The first surgery I ever participated in was an open appendectomy with an 80-year-old family practice doctor! 

Was there an experience that shifted you towards specializing in Transplant Surgery? 

I think there is something beautiful about how transplant cases have a way of bringing out the best in people. When I was a fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, I was working on a living kidney donor case and our patient, who ran an Amish produce stand, had a regular customer who volunteered to donate. Stories like these drive my faith in humanity. 

You mentioned there being living donor coaches at the University of Pittsburgh. What are some of the barriers patients face in asking for a living kidney or liver transplant? 

A big problem of living kidney and liver donor transplant is the ability to locate the right person at the right time. It comes down to the number of people you know and amount of community connections you have. 

Living donor transplantation takes a village. Ability to donate is influenced by so many factors like access to time off and caregiver availability during recovery. Our transplant team works very closely with our patients to help them navigate the journey to transplantation. With the right help, we have found that people will come out of the woodwork. It’s a beautiful thing. 

How did your interest in Transplant Surgery lead you to a fellowship in Acute & Surgical Critical Care Surgery? 

In the interest of helping patients on the transplant waiting list, I found myself during resident rotations in the ICU learning how to care for patients with acute liver failure. I found that I needed to learn more about what caused certain patients to get better while others did not which inspired me to go for a second fellowship in Surgical Critical Care at UC Davis. Now I split my time between Transplant and Surgical Critical Care one night per week. I found that Surgical Critical Care also lends itself much more to teaching the residents — I love it. 

Do you find that you have a unique perspective given your dual specialization? Has it ever made you think of a patient’s care differently? 

Oh, all the time — it happens every day. If there is a trauma patient with end-stage liver disease and significant portal hypertension, I can help provide interventions that I learned on the transplant service. The skills between both specialties make me more equipped to help patients in need of a liver or kidney transplant at any phase of their journey. 

Why did you decide to stay in academia? 

The beauty of working at an academic institution that places an emphasis on underserved communities is that our reach allows us to be a catchment area for many patients in rural areas. 

I also think it is so important to educate residents and teach them to be strong surgeons. One thing I love about UC Davis Health is that we are raising a generation of empathetic surgeons that care about the whole patient and the greater society. That is invaluable. 

Okay, last question. What can you be found doing in your free time? 

I just got married in September and my husband and I are huge sports fans — him more than I, admittedly! We’re big football people but when it comes to my alma mater (University of Nebraska), which we affectionately deem a “volleyball school,” we tune into their volleyball games. Otherwise, we love going down to McKinley Park on the weekends and throwing around a football. I am a die-hard Grateful Dead fan, so we have been known to take weekend trips to the Sphere in Vegas.