I walked into a room once to assess a fall. The patient could not tell me how it happened. He was physically fine after my assessment, but before I moved on I noticed he was wearing non-latex gloves. I asked how he got them and he laughed and said he was trying to close a case. He had been a detective. Those gloves brought back memories his family confirmed were real, and for the next few minutes I sat with a 90 year old man while he told me about a cold case like no time had passed at all. Nursing is not always about the vitals. Sometimes it is about being present long enough for a person to remember who they are. I became a nurse because it has always been my happy medium between a love of science and a need to serve others. I am drawn to the clinical precision of assessment, pathophysiology, and evidence based care, and equally drawn to the human being on the other side of all of it. Nursing lets me live in both places at once. A week after giving birth I recognized warning signs in myself, pushed through them, then made the decision to go back to the hospital where I was diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia and hypertensive crisis. My clinical training told me what I was seeing. My nursing identity made me act on it. Most women do not have that knowledge. That reality has shaped everything about how I practice and what I fight for. Health literacy is at the center of how I plan to contribute to my community as a nurse. I believe that when mothers understand their own bodies, recognize their warning signs, and feel equipped to speak up for themselves, outcomes change. That belief led me to make 'I Gave Birth' bracelet, a wearable emergency alert I give out free to mothers in my community. If a mother arrives is in an emergency situation, the bracelet tells medical staff she recently gave birth and may be experiencing a postpartum complication. It carries the top three warning signs to assess for and on the other side a reminder to give herself grace. I take these bracelets to community events and ship them to mothers, all free because health literacy does not live only in clinical settings. It lives in parking lots and church halls and anywhere a mother will let you sit beside her. I serve as a Philadelphia Chapter Facilitator for Chamber of Mothers, hold support circles for women in crisis pregnancies, and show up for maternal health advocacy at the state and federal level. In Pennsylvania I am working to establish legislation requiring documented blood pressure checks before postpartum discharge because informed patients and accountable systems have to work together. One without the other is not enough. I also recognized that social determinants shape outcomes long before a patient walks through any door, which led me to build a resource to help mothers access health information in plain language, understand her own health data, and navigate a fragmented system that too often leaves them without the knowledge they need to protect themselves. My long term goal is to become a certified nurse midwife, practicing in communities that face the greatest maternal health disparities, championing health literacy at every encounter, and continuing to fight for policy that makes those communities safer for every mother who walks through the door. Nursing gave me the tools to save my own life. I intend to spend the rest of my career using those same tools for everyone else.

My mother owned a publishing company. I have faint memories of being three years old beside her, helping print books and facilitate poetry readings. I do not remember every detail but I remember how it felt, like I was part of something, like my small hands mattered. The next year I became a published author. When I was eight I found a face painting book at Michael's for $7.99 with a four color palette and a small brush, and I started a business called Zee's Bees. I ran it for ten years, showing up to parties and community events, adding something bright to people's most important moments. I have been an entrepreneur since before I knew the word. So when people ask how I started a maternal health platform with less than $100, I tell them the dollar amount was new. The instinct was not. Maternal Intelligence was born from the hardest moment of my life. A week after giving birth I almost lost my life to postpartum preeclampsia and was in a hypertensive crisis. My clinical background from nursing school allowed me to see the signs and go back to the hospital. Many women do not have that training. That thought would not leave me alone. I am a low-income single mother living paycheck to paycheck, sharing a home with my mother and relying on a childcare subsidy to keep my son cared for while I work and study. Every dollar is accounted for before it arrives. I built this anyway, because my mother taught me never to wait for perfect conditions. I began to make 'I Gave Birth' bracelet, a wearable emergency alert I give out free to mothers. If a mother is in any emergency setting unable to speak for herself, the bracelet tells medical staff immediately that this person recently gave birth and may be experiencing a postpartum related complication. It carries the top three warning signs staff should assess for, and on the other side, a reminder to give herself grace. A mother in Florida reached out after receiving hers and said she cried because it was the first time she felt seen her entire pregnancy. That is what I am building toward, not a product but a feeling. The feeling that you matter, that your body's story matters, that someone is paying attention. My vision is a national platform trusted by mothers, hospitals, and doctors alike. The United States has some of the world's best physicians and resources but maternal outcomes remain a crisis because care is fragmented. Information does not follow the patient. Warnings get missed in the gaps. I want to connect all of it and anchor technology toward finally understanding the true cause of preeclampsia and postpartum preeclampsia, conditions that still take lives without a complete answer. I shine my light by showing up. I sit in support circles with women navigating crisis pregnancies. I advocate at the state and federal level as a mother and nurse who lived the care gap she is fighting to close. I serve as a Philadelphia Chapter Facilitator for Chamber of Mothers because community is infrastructure and someone has to build it. My son watches me work. He picks up my stethoscope, places it on my chest, and says heart. He is almost two and already learning that you build what the world is missing. My mother taught me that at three years old, standing beside her, feeling like my small hands mattered. I am teaching him the same thing now. That is the legacy I am building. That is how I shine my light.

I used to love studying. That might sound strange, but I genuinely enjoyed it. I would spend hours in the library not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Being surrounded by books I could reach for, the quiet focus of everyone around me, that was my environment. That was how I learned best. I built my whole academic identity around it. Then I had my son, and I had to learn how to do everything differently. He is almost two. The library is not exactly an option anymore. If I tried to keep him there for more than five minutes, he would give me a look that says his patience has officially run out. So I adapted. My bedroom, which used to be the last place I would ever study, has become my most calming space. I started watching nursing and science videos with animations and music, because if something was moving and colorful enough to hold his attention, I could actually absorb what was on the screen. We would end up dancing together, and I was learning pharmacology while he was just happy. I use my commutes like my life depends on it, lectures playing in the car every single time I drive. I have learned to find the pockets of time and make them count. What I did not expect was how much I would have to learn about myself at the same time. Becoming a mother meant learning who I was all over again, while simultaneously learning my son, learning what motherhood meant to me, and learning nursing concepts that do not pause for any of it. I am working toward my RN while also one class away from finishing my bachelor's degree in biomedical sciences, a degree I was on track to complete before my son was born. I was pregnant and enrolled at the same time, and I have not stopped since. But the cost of that final class, Biochemistry, has put it on hold. That one course is sitting between me and a degree I have worked years to earn. The hardest part of being a student and a single mother isn't exactly the exhaustion, though the exhaustion is real. It's the guilt that shows up in the in-between moments. The time I spend studying feels like time I am not spending with him. The time I spend with him feels like time I am not studying. There is no clean answer to that. But I have come to understand that both things can be true all at once. I am learning nursing, and I am learning him, and we are figuring it out together in the same season of life. He is learning while I am learning. And I am learning that I do not have to have it all figured out to keep going. I am a Licensed Practical Nurse working as a nurse manager, and I am the founder of maternal health platforms dedicated to mothers who fall through the gaps of a system not built for them. I built these platforms because a week after giving birth to my son, I almost lost my life. I was diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia and in a hypertensive crisis. I recognized the warning signs, pushed through my own fears, and checked myself in. My care team responded quickly. But what stayed with me was a question I could not shake: if I, with a clinical background, almost rationalized those symptoms away, what happens to the mother with no training and no one in her corner? That question became the foundation of everything I am building. Finishing my RN and my bachelor's degree is step one toward my larger goal of becoming a midwife, the kind of provider who catches what is building before it becomes a crisis, who shows up for mothers in their most vulnerable moments. My degrees feed directly into my businesses, Solo Stork and Maternal Intelligence Technologies, platforms I am building to support the mothers who need it most. And beyond the clinical work, I intend to be actively involved in the policies that affect a mother's life and her survival after having a baby, because care and systems have to work together. This scholarship would help me stay on track. Nursing textbooks run about $800 per semester, and courses I cannot always afford all at once mean I have had to be strategic about when I take them and in what order. Two thousand dollars would cover my required nursing books and one course, keeping me moving forward instead of waiting for finances to catch up to my goals. My son sees me studying and how I show up. And one day, when I am a midwife and we are no longer counting daycare days, when I can support his dreams the way I am fighting for mine right now but three times over, I want him to look back and know he was never my roadblock. He was my reason. He pushed me in a completely different direction in life and gave me a purpose I did not know I was missing. I want him to be proud. And I want him to know that somewhere along the way, while we were dancing to a nursing video in our bedroom, we were building something together.

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.

My motivation for pursuing advanced education took a turn after giving birth to my son, now almost 2 years ago. If I was to answer this question prior, it would have been because I want to take part in something I love and want to serve others. Now although this is still the case, my greatest motivation has now become my son and the life changing event I experienced once he got here. I planned to take my LPN nursing boards exam (NCLEX) months in advanced. While pregnant with my son, I prepared diligently for my second attempt in passing and becoming a nurse. I scheduled my test for July 26th at 8 AM, a month before my due date. On July 24th, my water broke. While actively in labor, I had to reschedule my exam on my way to the hospital, because who can afford to pay for another expensive exam. I planned it for a week later. And of course, on July 26, 2024, I gave birth to my son. Exactly a week after giving birth I almost lost my life to postpartum preeclampsia. I was in a hypertensive crisis and decided to check myself into a hospital because of my clinical background and simply not feeling right as a new mom. While at the hospital I had to reschedule my exam again. This time a month out, just to be on the safe side. That next month I took my exam and passed. But most importantly in those moments, a new path I never expected to take opened for me. This is where I began my journey in maternal health. After experiencing my own story and hearing the stories of others I began a pursuit to help improve the outcomes of mothers and babies. I first founded an organization 3 months postpartum called Solo Stork, a support network for single and pregnant women, which allowed me the opportunity to start my advocacy journey at the state level in Pennsylvania and the chance to speak at my capitol and panels on the maternal health crisis and paid family leave. Fast forward, now almost 2 years later, I now advocate on both the state and federal levels, advocating at Capitol Hill and meeting with legislators to ensure funding for maternal health research that can save lives. I created On Call for Change, an advocacy platform, for maternal health professionals and Maternal Intelligence AI, a maternal health intelligence platform to help moms, recognize warning signs and advocate for their care. In less than 2 weeks of launching the intelligence platform, I was accepted into one of Google Clouds' startup programs and was asked to take part in a PSA for Maternal Health with WVIA, a PBS-affiliate, and Maternal Family Health Services, a large nonprofit who oversees WIC on the eastern side of Pennsylvania. My goal and motivation go hand in hand, and it is to no longer live in a country where 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Pursuing higher education, allows me to pursue this fully as my end goal is to be a Certified Nurse Midwife helping mothers and moving policy. As of right now I am an LPN Nurse Manager who is in school for her RN while also juggling, motherhood, entrepreneurship, and positions on several maternal health coalitions. So as I do feel higher education is highly important, I also believe making a difference now when you can, is even greater. This scholarship will allow me to continue my education paying the out-of-pocket cost after loans so I can stay on track to graduate early 2027.