Better is a dream worth dreaming.
My work lives at the intersection of medicine, ecology, and community.
I believe in projects that: improve access to high quality healthcare, cultivate true wellness, and also ones that make people smile. Everything I do is grounded in evidence-based medicine, a curious spirit, advocacy, and the belief that health isn’t a solo project.
Rooted in connection to ourselves, each other, and the places we love.
Wellness is something we do together.
Selected Projects:
GREEN SPACE & THE NATURE GAP
Access to nature - trees, soil, gardens, and parks - has been linked to lower stress, better sleep, stronger hearts, and deeper community ties. But too often, those spaces are hardest to find in the neighborhoods that need them most. That’s what people mean when they talk about the nature gap.
I’m working on small, local projects (community gardens, schoolyard green-ups, public space makeovers)that make nature feel a little closer, a little more possible. The kind of places where people can gather, grow food, or just sit under a tree and breathe.
These are small-scale, high-impact, efforts meant to create beauty, connection, and belonging right where we are. Because everyone deserves the chance to feel the grass under their feet, to pick a tomato off the vine, or to sit in the shade and exhale.
Curious about green space projects, nature access, or getting your hands in the soil? Let’s talk.
COMMUNITY GATHERINGS
Workshops, garden days, supper clubs, walk and talks. Local community events connecting people, stories, and shared ground. Coordinating places to meet your neighbor, swap a recipe, plant something, or just be around others who care.
Because wellness is something we do together.
At the first event, there were eight of us who met on the beach for a farm to towel picnic. Sleeves rolled up, swapping stories between chopping herbs and keeping the fire lit.
Another event, we turned kitchen scraps into compost gold. Someone brought homemade bread and left with a few new friends. A toddler watered a shoe instead of a plant and no one seemed to mind. No phones were checked for three hours.
We’re healthier when we’re connected. To each other, to place, to purpose. Community is how we stay well and how we find our way back when we’re not.
Just real things, done in good company. In a culture obsessed with independence and optimization, the simple act of showing up for each other becomes quietly radical.
Come build something good with us.
ADVENTURE AS MEDICINE
It’s about doing something that stretches you, just a little. Something that feels new, or hard, or delightfully unnecessary. Walking a loop around your town overnight. Swimming in a river before breakfast. Sleeping in your back garden under the stars just because it’s Tuesday.
I used to think adventure had to be big. I sought out experiences like paragliding in the Himalayas, surfing bore tide waves in Alaska, and chasing zebras by bike in Kenya. But now I understand the beauty and importance of injecting the spirit of adventure into everyday life.
From a biological standpoint, novelty activates reward pathways in the brain, enhancing mood and motivation. Nature-based adventures reduce cortisol levels and improve immune function. Social adventures (laughing around a campfire, tackling a challenge with others) build oxytocin and deepen trust. There’s data behind all of it, sure, but most of us don’t need studies to know that after a good adventure, we feel more like ourselves. More awake. More whole.
But adventure also teaches skills that clinical settings often forget to value: flexibility, courage, patience, humility. The ability to sit with uncertainty and find meaning in discomfort. That beauty is everywhere if you’re paying attention. These are the very same muscles we need to navigate illness, aging, grief, or recovery.
So no, you don’t need Everest. You just need a head torch, a sandwich, and the guts to do something slightly odd. Something that makes you feel a little bit more alive.
Health as Ecology
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Mind, Body & Soil
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Health as Ecology - Mind, Body & Soil -
We’re always in relationship with the world beyond our skin.
The air we breathe, the food we eat, the people we spend time with, the stress of our work, the health of our waterways and soil and systems: this all becomes part of our personal ecosystem too.
We are walking ecosystems within larger ecosystems. Our homes, our neighborhoods, our communities, our planet. I can't help but appreciate that it's all connected.
When we pay attention to the whole ecosystem (the social and ecological determinants of health), we can ask better and more beautiful questions.
Health as ecology means creating the conditions for vibrant health. It’s how we show up for the people and places that matter.
That’s the work.
That’s grounded medicine.
Your gut microbiome talks to your brain. Your lungs trade air with trees. Your bones remember sunlight.
Years of patient care has taught me that real wellness is about connection: Connection to ourselves. Connection to each other. Connection to the natural world around us.
And it depends on context. On the ecosystem we’re part of, both inside and out. Not just biology, but relationship.
ACCESS TO CARE & DISASTER RESPONSE
After responding as part of a medical team to earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal, I now work on capacity building. Working to support healthcare higher education programs that help brilliant, driven students become the doctors and nurses their own communities.
JUMP JUMP JUMP
Despite strange looks from my oncology colleagues, one of my favorite times of year is taking folks with tough diagnoses to jump out of perfectly working aircrafts.
WILDERNESS MEDICINE
Wilderness medicine taught me how to pay attention, adapt, and take care of people with whatever I had on hand. Just basic gear, practiced skills, and the ability to stay calm when things go sideways.
