I grew up in rural Virginia, where my father was a science teacher, and my mother was the primary school secretary and ran her own interior design business. Before my 10th-grade year, I attended a summer program for girls excelling in math and science, where I met many women engineers. Inspired, I started saying that I might become an engineer. One day, someone responded, “people like you aren’t engineers.” That was the day I decided to become an engineer and realized how much I am motivated by challenges.

After earning my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering, I was quickly promoted to lead an interdisciplinary team designing piping systems on aircraft carriers. While working in engineering and operations, I completed certificate programs in Lean practice, Six Sigma, systems engineering, and project management. I was then recruited to work as a Lean consultant for Boeing, traveling across the country to help departments improve their support service operations.

In the early 2000s, hospitals began recognizing the benefits of Lean but lacked healthcare employees trained in it, leading to a wave of hiring Lean practitioners from outside the industry. I was fortunate to be part of this transition, starting at UCLA Health System. When the COO at UCLA became the CEO at Stanford Hospital and Clinics, I followed him. After leading improvement for the Oncology and Cardiovascular service lines, I joined a consultancy to have the flexibility to live anywhere. I moved to North Carolina, where I currently live with my husband and three children. At this consultancy, which was later acquired by a financial services firm, I led the innovation of their Lean Healthcare Practice, was a member of their strategy team, managed multi-million-dollar client portfolios, and was on the path to partnership. Most importantly, I learned a lot and made a significant impact.

However, I desired more. I was disillusioned with performative diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and tired of feeling like the token Black employee. I wanted to use my experience to solve bigger challenges and not just design and improve processes but also services and systems. I had seen broken systems that largely serve marginalized communities hire companies with an odd and ineffective fit due to a lack of cultural understanding. I wanted to work for the communities I represent, using my varied background to reimagine and redesign health, education, and community services to improve equity, access, and outcomes, ultimately leading to less poverty.

In August 2022, I filed the paperwork to create Empact Global, LLC. I continued working for the Lean Healthcare consultancy until I secured a contract and publicly launched Empact Global on March 31, 2023, with NASA as my first client.

My work is driven by challenge and an unwavering desire to leave this world better than I found it. I rarely meet Black people with my skill set, and I know that Black, Native American, Latino, veterans, and people with mental health challenges have often been subjects of much experimentation and often lack trust. I believe I am called to help improve their lives with empathy.