about
Contemplative, charismatic, and curious by nature, I have the privilege of being a full-time clinical chaplain on the Inpatient Palliative Care consult team at Stanford Health Care. We collaborate across disciplines (primarily MDs, APPs, Social Workers, and Spiritual Care providers), coming together alongside patients, their loved ones, and staff members at threshold moments in life and serious illness, calling attention to our core selves and values, and quality of life.
Architecture was my first career. My specialty and joy was project management for residential construction. I facilitated high-functioning, interdisciplinary teams as we each did our part to complete remodels and new homes. My architecture career culminated at Environmental Works, co-managing the construction of a 62-unit affordable housing complex for Seniors sponsored by the Korean Women’s Association.
Over the course of my life I have spent time communing, serving, and working in several different Christian settings: United Methodist, Presbyterian Church USA, Episcopal, and the United Church of Christ. I served as the Associate for Staff and Ministry Formation at Epiphany Parish of Seattle, and as a minister-in-training at Liberation United Church of Christ. Currently I am a member in covenant with FCCPA as an ordained and authorized minister in the Northern California Nevada Conference of the United Church of Christ. While my feet have been walking on a Christian path since childhood, my heart, mind, and practices are open to the wisdom and beauty of other faith, spiritual, and philosophical traditions. I am a member the Open Heart Project online sangha (Tibetan, Vajrayana Lineage) and completed their Buddhist Immersion and Meditation Teacher Training in June 2023. I have also been deeply influenced by Muslim, Jewish, Religious Naturalist, Humanist, Unitarian Universalist, and non-religious teachers and colleagues.
Other significant influences on my self and vocation include the Upper Room's Two-Year Academy for Spiritual Formation, Shanti's Inmate Support Project, a program of the now closed Multifaith Works, where I volunteered as an emotional support volunteer for those incarcerated at the King County Correctional Facility, the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's Undoing Institutional Racism training, and the 9-month Foundations in Somatic Abolition Communal Consultations for White Bodies with Resmaa Menakem and Education for Racial Equity. As one of my seminary professors, Dr. Mark Hearn teaches, and I paraphrase, "we all have intersecting social locations and cultures that create a kaleidoscope lens through which we interpret and project the world and life around us." Our race, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, and other social location markers that determine our societal positions, privilege, and power are constantly shifting depending on our context. Our social locations, whether we want them to or not, affect our images of the sacred, self, others, and the world. Even as I believe we all have access to a power within us, among us, and beyond us, my spirituality has been affected by my embodied experience as a white, mostly middle class, bisexual cis-woman from the Midwest. I do not expect you to check your embodied realities at the door in order to talk about your spirituality. I have a spirituality of incarnate life, death, and rebirth and all of who you are is welcome in our conversations.
I completed my Clinical Pastoral Education Residency, Fellowship Specialization in Palliative Care, and two+ years of Certified Educator training at Stanford Health Care, my certificate in Interprofessionalation in Palliative Care for Practicing Clinicians with UCSF Palliative Medicine, my Master of Divinity at Seattle University's School of Theology and Ministry, and my Spiritual Direction training with the Sisters of Mercy at Mercy Center, Burlingame. I also have a Bachelor of Architecture from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. The creative process, reflective practice, and working and living together with honesty and joy are continuous threads throughout my vocational life whether as an architect, project manager or spiritual care provider.
I live in the Bay area and love exploring the art, architecture, and trees on Stanford's gorgeous campus. When I'm visiting my home state in the Midwest, I lobby for a pilgrimage to the Great Lakes. Whether outside or inside you'll find me reading, singing, dabbling with watercolors, and spending time with my dear friends and godchildren.
I look forward to hearing from you.