“As a kid, I had a tendency to daydream in class. In the second grade, I was moved to the front of the room and my teacher gave me a midnight blue bookmark with a white and silver unicorn and a quote from Albert Einstein that would stay with me forever: “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. It would take time for that message to come to fruition for me, but God never gave up. First, He wove caring for others into my heart and from a young age I knew I wanted to become a Registered Nurse. My first position was in a busy Emergency Room in downtown Austin. When a pediatric patient came in, the other nurses would come find me so I could help or assume complete care of their patient. 

After one year of a turbulent but meaningful experience, I decided to move to Houston to be closer to family and to seek an opportunity in the world-renowned Texas Medical Center. Early in my career, God revealed His hand was guiding me! Before I found a job, hurricane Allison hit Houston with a vengeance and the medical center was under water except for one hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital. An opportunity to work day shift in the heart center on the acute care floor was offered to me and I was elated! One of my first memories was walking into a patient’s rooms and not finding them in their bed. My heart fell but I was quickly relieved by a small hand tugging on my scrub pants. My patient was on the floor playing with his toy trucks and he wanted me to join him. He was only 4 days post open heart surgery. I immediately fell in love with being a pediatric nurse and spent the next twenty years committed to their care.

After four years of practicing nursing in the pediatric cardiovascular acute and intensive care units (CVICU), I graduated with a Master’s in Nursing and passed my Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (PNP) certification board exam. My first position as a PNP was in a small, privately owned pediatrician office. The greatest honor was serving as the continuity care provider for children in the foster care system. After a year there, knowing the Texas Medical Center was leading medicine, my husband and I moved back downtown Houston. For more than a year I worked in Gastroenterology and Nutrition. While I learned a ton about common causes of abdominal pain and failure to thrive in infancy, running a constipation clinic was not my dream job! So, I accepted a position at M. D. Anderson in Stem Cell Transplant and Cellular Therapy as a nurse practitioner in the inpatient and outpatient setting. It was here that performance improvement, quality assurance, and research began to interest me. I could begin to use my imagination and collaborate with colleagues for better processes to improve patient care.

After my first son was born, I realized how much I missed working in a pediatric only hospital. I returned to Texas Children’s and worked as a nurse practitioner in stem cell transplant and then lung transplant. Caring for children that required lung transplants was the hardest and most rewarding job I ever had the privilege of experiencing. The team was outstanding and I am forever grateful. The long hours and night on-call requirements were not suitable once I was remarried so I needed to make a change. 

I was given the opportunity to be the inaugural Transfusion Safety Officer at Texas Children’s Hospital. Partnering with colleagues across the entire system was an honor I will never forget. A trusted leader once told me that my responsibility was not to find solutions to problems, but to seek the opportunities that are everywhere to make systems better for patients and staff.  The challenge was accepted! After six years in this role, I left for an opportunity to implement a software system that enabled remote patient monitoring. At my going away party, I was given an award for “outstanding accomplishments”. Admittedly, I chuckled because I know many saw me as a patient advocate and an exemplary employee while others saw me as a troublemaker!

When the CEO of the new company I was working with told me my travel commitment would increase from 30% to 90%, I knew I had to make a change. My health was also deteriorating and the doctors were not sure of the cause. A friend (and fellow nurse) and I had lunch and she gave me a card. Upon reading the card, all I could do at the time was cry. It simply had a verse:

“Perhaps you were born for such a time as this”  Esther 4:14.

It would take nearly a year of prayer, tears, medical diagnoses, a surgery, prompting from some dear friends, and a lot of love and patience from my husband to hear God’s call. Hello Eema was born by a mama (me) that wants every woman to know (with all their being) how much God loves her and wants a relationship with her.”