The life lessons I have experienced have fueled my drive to be a nurse and public health advocate. In the year 2021, I worked a full-time day shift job and a part-time night shift job position while navigating through a high-risk pregnancy and completing my biochemistry course prerequisite for nursing school. I am a woman of color who successfully birthed a premature infant and has exclusively breastfed her since birth. My daughter is healthy and has no abnormalities. I credit this to my education, dedication to being healthy during and before pregnancy, the support of my family and friends, lactation and birth coach, and a working relationship with my OBGYN. This result is what I desire every mother to experience. The vast majority of my family and friends represent this medically underserved demographic. In my work in public health, I developed skills to promote policies to change these ugly truths, but I also feel a responsibility to work directly with patients as a nurse in the neighborhoods they reside in, the neighborhoods that I hail from. While I thought the world of public health and clinical medicine could be separated, the realities are that these worlds overlap in complex and important ways. Working as a new to the field infection control practitioner on the Southside of Chicago during a global pandemic for the past 3 years has reassured me of this. Reducing healthcare disparities is personal to me because many of my family and community members do not have adequate access to preventative care services. The various positions I have held in healthcare have collectively reinforced my career ambitions. Working as a behavior data analyst, at Marcus Autism Center in the feeding clinic, taught me how to channel my emotions by treating patients as people, not as illnesses and showing compassion and understanding in the most difficult moments. One spring night at Atlanta Medical Center, the loud speaker went off and alerted the emergency department a trauma was 10 minutes out. I was assigned to registration for the trauma bay, so I grabbed my pen and intake forms and walked back. The ambulance arrived and it was a whirlwind. A man had been stabbed once in the leg and once in the chest. I stepped up to the gurney and asked the demographic questions I needed to create his chart and to contact his next of kin. I credit my composure to my team that was surrounding me and my confidence in myself to get my patient registered. The raw and real encounters I have experienced at medical facilities have collectively reinforced my decision to pursue a career in nursing. I welcome the opportunity to make certain my patients' needs are met during joyful and challenging encounters. I am ready to rise to the challenge of overcoming every obstacle that may sit before me and beyond to reach my goal of serving my future patients as a nurse and public health advocate. Ultimately, I aspire to function as a family nurse practitioner with my patient care focus encompassing maternal and child health. The money I will save by receiving this scholarship will contribute to my tuition at DePaul University and cover childcare expenses for my daughter while I am in class and at clinical rotations. Thank you.