In 2008, at 29, I was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. I started asking questions (about my medical records, what my doctors were thinking, why they talked about me the way they did), and I never really stopped.

That curiosity became a career.

For the past nine years, I've been the Communications and Patient Initiatives Director for the OpenNotes lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. We research patient-clinician communication and, more recently, the ways AI is reshaping it. Before that, I spent years doing this work as a research subject, then a patient advisor, then a co-investigator.

Along the way, I've co-authored more than 60+ peer-reviewed publications in journals including NEJM, Cancer Cell, JAMA Network Open, and the BMJ. I've given more than 100 talks nationally and internationally. I received a PCORI award as a "patient PI" with no institutional affiliation (one of the first people to do that). I co-wrote the field's first peer review guide for patients and other first-time reviewers, because someone had to and no one else had. My work has been recognized with the Jan Esenwein Public Service Award in Neuro-Oncology, the "Doc Tom" Ferguson Award from the Society for Participatory Medicine, and recognition through the White House Cancer Moonshot.

I saw all of this as on-the-job training. I know this is a rare and unique experience. What I don’t have is a degree to go with it, so I am going to fix that.

In fall 2026, I'm starting at UC Davis, 19 years, four brain surgeries, and one long-running blog after my first attempt at a four-year degree got interrupted.

I am not a math person, and I am not naturally talented in the STEM realm. But I am naturally curious, and I'm going back to school anyway, to formalize what I've been doing all along.

I've been writing about my own health, patient advocacy, and research since 2008.