About
I got sick.
Then I got loud.
Author of 7 books. Keynote speaker across 27 countries. TEDx speaker. Patient-in-Residence at two academic medical centers. Founder of Spooniversity, Bedcoders, and Patient.mba. Living with POTS and dysautonomia.
I have POTS — Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, part of a cluster of autonomic conditions that mean my nervous system misfires when I stand up, when I get stressed, when I overdo it. Some days I work standing. Some days I work horizontal. The body sets the terms; the work finds its shape around them.
Before that diagnosis, I was already building things — writing, speaking, consulting. The illness didn't end that. It changed what I built and why.
I've written seven books. Most of them are about healthcare — about what patients actually experience versus what the system believes they experience, about the gap between those two things, and about what it takes to close it. Some are practical. Some are polemical. All of them say things I couldn't get anyone else to say.
I've spoken in 27 countries. Hospitals. Pharmaceutical companies. Medical schools. Patient advocacy conferences. Technology companies building health products. I bring the same thing to all of them: lived experience that can't be faked, and a willingness to say the uncomfortable thing clearly.
Twice I've been named Patient-in-Residence — a formal role at academic medical centers where a patient embeds in the institution to change how it works from the inside. I take that work seriously. The goal isn't inspiration. It's structural change.
The communities and platforms I build — Spooniversity, Bedcoders, Patient.mba — exist because I kept looking for them and they weren't there. That's the whole logic. The gap is the product.
I live with my daughter, who is the reason for everything I do that's worth doing.
Making the Invisible Visible
The healthcare system is built on narratives — about what patients are like, what they need, what they can handle. Most of those narratives are wrong. They're built from clinical observation, not from living it. My job is to put the lived version in the room and make it impossible to ignore.
Constraint is Compass
Every platform I've built has been shaped by limitation. Limited energy, limited time, limited physical capacity. Those constraints aren't obstacles to good work — they're the design conditions. Constraint forces clarity. It cuts the things that don't matter. It finds the thing that actually does.
The Both/And
I am exhausted and productive. I am struggling and useful. I am sick and capable. The either/or thinking the wellness industry runs on doesn't fit the reality of chronic illness. You learn to hold both things at once, or you don't survive the complexity of it.
The short version
Books
7 published, spanning patient experience, healthcare systems, and chronic illness
Speaking
27 countries, 500+ talks, audiences from 50 to 5,000
Patient-in-Residence
2× academic medical center appointments
Clinicians reached
20,000+ through direct programs and partnerships
Diagnosis
POTS / Dysautonomia / Complex chronic conditions (since 2010)
Communities built
Spooniversity, Bedcoders, Patient.mba
TEDx
Yes
Work with me.
Speaking. Consulting. Writing. If you need someone who can translate lived patient experience into strategic clarity, that's what I do.