CEO by day.
Storyteller always.

Mission and Margin: Running a Community Health Center Without Losing Either

I started in community health in 1999 as an AmeriCorps volunteer and I’m now the CEO. Twenty-five years in one field teaches you that the hardest problem isn’t access or funding or staffing — it’s holding the mission steady while you make the business work. This talk is about how that’s actually done, from someone still doing it.

Rooms leave with: a working model for decisions where money and mission pull opposite directions, language for talking about equity that survives a board meeting, and permission to lead like a person rather than an org chart.

FQHC and primary care associations · health system leadership · rural and community health · nonprofit boards

Believe Her the First Time

Endometriosis takes most women somewhere near a decade to get diagnosed. My wife lives with it. So does my daughter. I watched both of them spend years being told the pain was normal, or anxiety, or something to manage quietly — and I run a health system that could have been the place doing the telling. This is the talk I give as both.

Rooms leave with: what the diagnostic delay actually costs a real life, where primary care keeps missing it, and a concrete answer to the question men in the room are usually too embarrassed to ask — what am I supposed to do about it?

Women’s health conferences · clinical education · patient advocacy · men’s and caregiver audiences

Beautifully Unfocused: Leading With a Brain That Won’t Sit Still

Thirteen books, a podcast, four albums, a gallery show, and a day job running a health center. People ask how. The honest answer is that I stopped trying to manage my ADHD into silence and started building a life shaped around it. This talk is about the difference between those two strategies, and what it costs to get it wrong.

Rooms leave with: a way to talk about neurodivergence at work that isn’t an apology, practical structures that work with a wandering brain instead of against it, and relief — usually from the people who thought it was just them.

Leadership and management · neurodiversity and DEI programming · creative industries · employee resource groups

Human First: Keeping People Visible in What We Build

I use AI to make art and to work faster, and I’ve stood in a gallery while artists protested outside over it. I’m not an evangelist and I’m not a refuser. My position is narrower and harder to argue with: the tools can help with the work, but they don’t get to decide what matters. This is the talk for rooms tired of both sides shouting.

Rooms leave with: a usable line between what to hand a machine and what to keep, a framework for disclosure that doesn’t read as defensive, and a first-hand account of what happens when you adopt these tools publicly and take the heat for it.

Healthcare technology · corporate leadership · creative and arts organizations · higher education

Formats

Keynote (30–60 min), breakout or workshop (60–90 min), panel, fireside, or podcast guest. Happy to shape any of the four talks to the room rather than deliver it off the shelf.

Travel

Based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Spokane airport is 40 minutes away. Available across the Inland Northwest and nationally, and for virtual sessions.

Fees

Flexible, and scaled to the organization. Community health centers, patient advocacy groups, and nonprofits — ask anyway. Some rooms matter more than the fee.