My Story
In 1981, as a graduate student, I worked for one summer in a remote village in Kenya as part of an exchange program. With little healthcare on-the-ground experience, I helped the hospital’s director develop a formal daily census and created craft and health programs for the local women and children. The experience changed my life forever.
In 1982, after completing an MA in health services administration, I took a “staff position” in a small, privately owned Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) in California. I needed the paycheck more than I objected to what the job actually was – a sales representative. For the three years I worked there, I became the manager of a six-person sales and service department. And handled the national, large employer accounts sometimes using the federal mandate that was developed by the government to force employers to offer HMOs to their union members and employees. The experience began to change my mind about our healthcare system.
By the time I accepted the position of Director of Marketing in a larger San Francisco HMO, health insurance mergers and acquisitions were well underway. Our plan was one of the first pilot programs for Medicare, gaining an enrollment of over 7,000 members. The HMO was a staff model, so that doctors and hospital staff, and the marketing, finance, and member services department directors worked together to both grow the plan and encourage direct relationships with members. Many of our Medicare seniors formed an auxiliary that worked directly with my staff at enrollment and health fairs. Again, I handled the national accounts. Within the four years I worked there, the plan was first sold to a Catholic healthcare organization and later to become a secondary center for Kaiser Permanente. I left when the Kaiser deal was being completed. That experience changed my mind forever about the quality and affordability of American healthcare.
These experiences in the US, plus a trip to Kenya and later to Cuba, resulted in a personal and professional goal – to help bring about a universal healthcare program for Americans. After leaving the industry, I returned one more unfortunate time (still thinking I could make a difference), and eventually found other ways to serve specific populations, especially the elderly. I never gave up on my initial goal of an insurance-free, affordable program that focused on health and healing as well as disease and illness.
Since 1994, I have written extensively for corporate clients, trade magazines, local and alternative newspapers on a variety of topics, worked under a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant, and as a grant writer for several non-profit organizations.
In 2009, turning my professional writing career into something more personal, I indie published a memoir, Getting to Home: Sojourn in a Perfect House, about the process of building a house as a single woman. Other publications followed: “How Many Writing Books Does It Take?” appeared in the 2010 debut issue of Line Zero, a literary-arts magazine; a personal essay, “Good Vibrations,” was published in Full Grown People, an online magazine in 2015.
“Thank you, Grace Paley” was published in Memory into Memoir: An Anthology in 2016; “Tis the Season” in the Red Wheelbarrow Writers’ anthology So Much Depends Upon…” in 2018; “In the Red Kitchen” in True Stories: The Narrative Project in 2019; and “It Isn’t Watching” appeared in For the Love of Orcas, an anthology dedicated to saving our endangered orcas.
In 2023, I indie published a memoir, The Red Kitchen. It is an account of how family dysfunction and a repressed memory can be both a challenge and ultimately a blessing in disguise. My book, through podcasts and author interviews, served as a catalyst and comfort. Readers and listeners reported back to me that they were able to turn their experiences into an understanding that supported their personal growth and encouraged forgiveness.