I started nursing school because I loved science and wanted to help people. That was my whole reason, until my body taught me why this work matters. Eric Maurice Brandon's story stopped me. He was an LPN who spent his career caring for others and their children, dying while coming home from an overnight shift caring for a young patient. I am also an LPN, and the exhaustion of showing up during shifts and for my child immediately after is not abstract to me. Eric gave his life to this field, and his story reminded me why I am still in it. I rescheduled my nursing boards while in labor. A week after giving birth, I almost lost my own life. I used my own clinical knowledge to check myself into a hospital, where I was in a hypertensive crisis and diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia. Even while recovering, I kept studying, determined not to let that week take my exam too. My care team responded quickly, and a month later I passed and became an LPN, still carrying what had almost happened to me but refusing to let it hold me back. That week turned my love of science and desire to help people into something specific: a determination to make sure other mothers recognize danger in themselves the way I did, and have the confidence to act before it's too late. That determination is why I'm pursuing my RN while working as an LPN, and why I founded Maternal Intelligence, helping moms advocate for their care using AI to detect early warning signs. I hold a stakeholder seat with the Pennsylvania House Black Maternal Health Caucus, and hand out free I Gave Birth bracelets at community events, so mothers and staff both recognize postpartum complications in time. None of this happens separately from motherhood, it happens inside of it. I'm a single mother finishing my nursing education while living with my mother, and my son learns alongside me. He watches me practice with my stethoscope so often he now places it on his own chest and says "chest." He turns two this month. Studying used to mean long stretches in a library, now it happens in bursts, sometimes out of breath while dancing with my toddler, notes still open on my phone. I carry that lesson into every room I work in. I once assessed a fall on a patient who couldn't tell me how it happened. He was fine, but I noticed non-latex gloves on his hands. He laughed and said he was trying to close a case, he had been a detective, and I sat with a 90 year old man reliving a cold case like no time had passed. Nursing isn't always about the vitals. Sometimes it's about being present long enough for a person to remember who they are. I am pursuing my RN because the version of nursing I started with was never enough once I understood what was at stake for mothers like me. Eric Brandon spent his career, and ultimately his life, caring for others. I intend to spend mine making sure fewer mothers learn the hard way what I learned a week after giving birth, and continue being a voice for nurses advocating where policy and systems change. Nursing gave me the tools to save my own life, and I intend to spend my career using those same tools for everyone else. This scholarship would help me keep up with payment plans and provide for my son. I don't want financial strain to end what I've already sacrificed so much for.

If I were to answer this question a few years ago, I would have said I want to help people. That still stands, but it looks different now. I've always been drawn to biomedical science and serving others. Nursing felt like the place in between where both could live. What I've learned is that in service, you are always learning. It is the kind of education you cannot get from a textbook, and that is exactly what I hope to carry through every stage of my career. But it wasn't until I was lying in a hospital bed on a magnesium drip, too weak to hold my 6 lb newborn, that I understood what passion really is. When I was pregnant, all I could think about was living to see my baby. In that moment I realized I needed to live to raise him. That was when everything shifted for me. It was the start of motherhood shifting my ambition. I was in my early 20s during my LPN program. I so actively recall doing my OB clinical rotation, walking around the maternity ward thinking, "Yeah, this will never be my specialty. I could never." Now 26, it is the direct path I'm taking, full speed ahead. My goal is to become a midwife, my own experience and the fact that more than 80% of pregnancy related deaths in America are preventable is exactly why. I work as an LPN nurse manager, but my maternal health work happens after hours, fueled by surviving postpartum preeclampsia one week after delivery. It is the passion I never saw coming. With my lived experience and clinical knowledge, I became a maternal health policy advocate, now working at the state and federal levels, advocating for legislation including the PREEMIE Act, the Safe Motherhood Initiative, and the NIH IMPROVE Act. My son will be 2 soon. He is my heart in human form, and everything I build is because I want to be someone he is proud of. Beverly Patterson's story resonates with me deeply, a nurse whose career kept opening doors to grow, serve, and share. I feel I am in a constant state of that same growth, and with it comes greater opportunity to advocate for mothers. The impact I hope to make in midwifery is rooted in what almost took my life, a warning sign that was missed. I want to become the midwife who sees the risk before it becomes fatal, not just by reading a chart, but by connecting a mother's vitals, biomarkers, and her own words, because all of it is data and data builds toward a solution. I have already advocated on Capitol Hill for legislation that directly impacts whether mothers survive childbirth. In ten years I see myself in a hospital delivery room and in the rooms where policy is written, because both spaces shape maternal outcomes. I want every mother and her partner to feel safe, heard, and believed at every stage of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. That is the midwife I want to become and what better time than to start now.