I strive to create connection through relationship-centered, community-driven work that spans multiple domains including community, clinical environments, academic spaces and national networks. 

I prioritize my roots and remain accountable to the community that raised me by maintaining strong relationships with the Okanagan Nation. I have co-chaired the Okanagan Indian Band Youth Leadership Council and provided trauma-informed care education to the community nursing team. I hope to continue bringing the lessons I learn back to my people ensuring knowledge flows in meaningful and reciprocal ways.

Locally, my work is grounded in connection as a means of creation. The research I lead is rooted in research as ceremony, and we intentionally create events that prioritize Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being. A primary method I use to build connection and generate knowledge is sharing circles. This opens space for storytelling, relational accountability, and meaningful connection among participants. This approach ensures work is guided by lived experience rather than through extractive approaches. 

Further to this, within academic medicine, I curate connection through mentorship of medical students and residents, particularly BIPOC learners, fostering spaces of belonging, shared experience and mutual support. 

Across all settings, I work relationally and collaboratively to amplify marginalized voices, challenge exclusionary spaces and help create change within systems that were not designed to include us. 

Connection will be central to my future work as both a guiding principle and a practical strategy for achieving meaningful and lasting change. To fully harness the power of connection for meaningful and lasting impact, we must invest in relationships that are sustainable, reciprocal, and accountable. This includes connections between communities and institutions, between clinician and patients, and between learners, leaders and mentors. Connection also requires intentionally creating spaces that support deep listening where diverse ways of knowing are valued, lived experience is centred, and decision-making power is shared.  When connection is prioritized in this way, development work moves beyond transactional engagement toward community-led change. 

In alignment with the work I plan to continue, connection is paramount and central to Indigenous self-determination. I aim to contribute to work that is not solely measured by outputs alone but by whether communities feel heard, respected and empowered.