A nurse at the bedside,
a leader at the table.

Her Story

The work found me
before I knew its name.

I came into nursing before I had language for what it was asking of me. I trained at Pasadena City College and went to work in a pediatric intensive care unit — a place where there is no script, only the work of staying present with what arrives. Early in my career, I stood at the edge of a hospital bed and looked down at a three-year-old child we could not save. The conversation I had with her family months later — a conversation that had no agenda — taught me what philanthropy actually is. They named a grieving room in the hospital. That was the moment gratitude became philanthropy for me, and I have spent the rest of my career trying to honor the lesson.

Over twenty-five years, I have generated more than $100 million for nonprofit health systems. Senior development at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. Senior Director of Major Gifts at Loyola Marymount University. Senior Director — and Interim Director — of the foundation through the USC Keck School of Medicine's acquisition of Verdugo Hills Hospital. Director of Philanthropy at Providence Mission Hospital Foundation in Mission Viejo, where I launched the system's first regional grateful-patient program.

I also taught what I learned. As faculty at the AHP Madison Institute, I co-built curricula on campaigns and major gift initiatives. I write and speak on gratitude-led philanthropy. The Grace & Gratitude Group is the place where those years come to rest: coaching the people who carry healthcare, holding clinicians at the ocean, and helping foundations treat gratitude as the beginning of the relationship — not the receipt.