I was raised in northwest Washington and got early exposure to the practice of health care through my father, who was an orthopedic surgeon. I never felt any pressure to follow in his footsteps, but my father's dedication to his patients and deep satisfaction with his job certainly made a lasting impression on me. After a liberal arts education in which I majored in Spanish, I found my way to medical school at Stanford University and later completed my orthopedic residency training at University of California at San Francisco. Following my training, I worked for Kaiser Permanente in Northern California for four years, based in Walnut Creek. I was then fortunate to join the orthopedic group at Kaiser Permanente Northwest in 2009. Probably through equal parts nature and nurture, this career has felt like a natural path for me. There are many things I value about my job as an orthopedist, but what I like most is the ability to help a variety of patients with a variety of injuries or disabilities and help them back to function through conservative treatment or, when appropriate, surgery.