I already work in IT and I'm pursuing a Cybersecurity degree, but I have been working in the field for a while. One day my boss met with a vendor to install some sound masking technology, and I walked into my boss' office and said, "Don't sign that contract for 72hrs". It turned out I didn't need 72hrs, just 20min. I took a Raspberry Pi and a speaker, and replicated the solution. The vendor wanted $26,000, I replicated the solution for $80. Technology is something that we can use to solve both complex and simple problems, all with relatively novel solutions. My role is to find just that. Simple solutions for complex problems, using technology. As I finish undergrad and venture into medical school, I plan to take that 30 years of technology experience and apply it to medicine. There's an ongoing problem of people in Medicine not understanding the technology employed, and I can speak intelligently on the subject. I suspect that I will eventually rise to Chief Medical Informatics Officer at some point in my career, but in the meantime, I'll be working with patients and staff in a way to help them utilize technology to improve their lives.

Four generations on both sides of my family come from a little town in central Oklahoma called Pawnee. It's where the creator of Dick Tracy is from, the Pawnee Tribe, and lots of history. It's a town that has been slowly dying away. This is due to a lack of jobs, a lack of leadership, oil production was also a big factor. I had the privilege of living in NYC and LA, and I have a lot of experience to bring back to that small town. I've been 30 years in the IT field, and now I'm making the transition to become a Doctor and go back and serve my community. I plan to do this by specializing in Rural Family Medicine and helping to build back in the economy. I plan to bring health, growth, education, and hope to a small community worth saving. I list that first, because that goal is more important than me. I just turned 50. I am a former IT executive. I had to drop out of college the first time to take care of my father who was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. I had always wanted to be a doctor, and unfortunately it wasn't meant to be at that time. Now that I've had a lot more life experience under my belt, I want to return to my first love, and study Medicine. I will be graduating in December, Summa Cum Laude from Davenport University, after 30 years as a college Junior. After that I'll be doing a post-bacc to get my pre-requisite courses so that I can attend medical school.

My mother is an alcoholic. This by itself was a bad situation, from having to hide her keys, or disconnect her battery on her car so she couldn't go buy more alcohol; let alone, the monthly task of having to go through the house and clean out all the empty bottles she had hidden. But it that is only the tip of the iceberg. My father was a Vietnam veteran and was exposed to Agent Orange. He was classified as 100% disabled. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but because of my mother's alcoholism, not only did I have to protect her from herself, but I couldn't trust her to be in a stable state in order to take care of my father if he needed help. Between taking care of my father, the farm, trying to go to school, and work full time, it proved to be too much. I was forced to make the difficult decision to drop out of school and take care of my family. It's been 20 years since then, and I'm now back in school to finish my degree and become a doctor. As a result, I have a well established career in IT. Part of dealing with alcoholism is being able to make positives happen from negatives. It wasn't what I planned to do, but it worked out that way, and now I'm in a position to speak intelligently about IT as it relates to medicine. So as ironic as it sounds, my mother's alcoholism helped prepare me for a future I didn't know existed, it's just unfortunate that I had to put my life on hold for 20 years in order to do it. I'm not sure that I agree with the statement of how we choose to respond to life's challenges shapes our lives...sometimes we aren't afforded a choice; we just have to do and deal with the fallout as it comes. I didn't choose to drop out of college, it was the only choice if I wanted my parents to live. Sure, I could've just left entirely, but that would've signed my father's death warrant, and possibly my mother, and possibly even someone I had never met if I mother were involved in an accident that took someone else's life. So no, I didn't have that choice, it's what had to be done at the time. There's an old Jewish Talmudic proverb that states: "Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world."...every single person has something of value to contribute to this world. Whether that's to cure cancer, provide an opportunity for someone else to do a good deed, or simply to serve as a bad example. We each have our part to play. It's through the connections we make throughout our life and our scope of influence to others that allows us to grow as a society. With that said, addiction causes a person to do things and behave in a way that they normally wouldn't, under different circumstances. To that end, we much take advantage of the opportunities to save another person, especially when they're a danger to themselves and others. The simple act of saving one person, could save the entire world.

Paying it forward is when someone does a mitzvah for me, I can then in turn do a mitzvah for someone else for a stranger to in a way, re-pay the kindness that someone gave to me when I was in need. Of course, we should always be doing mitzvot, and giving tzedakah, but sometimes we're just not able, and sometimes, we're the ones in need. I grew up on a dirt farm, in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma. The average income in the town I grew up in was $18,000 a year, and almost nobody had an abundance of money. I've had times in my life where I had nothing, I've had times in my life where I've had no wants in life. I've had the misfortune of losing my job, my marriage, my credit, and now declaring bankruptcy and having to start over. Fortunately, I am back in school to finish my degree, and eventually become a doctor, so that I can pay it forward and help those in need. I've not really had any real instances of someone "paying it forward" in my life, and I've never been one to ask for help until now. Though I've always been the one to give my last $5 to someone when that'd leave me with nothing and I still have no idea how I'm going to pay for medical school, but one step at a time. First, I need to through undergrad, and then a post-bacc (because my major was unrelated to medical school). But nothing would make me happier than being in a position where I can help my community and be a good example for the Jewish community.

Medicine and Technology go hand-in-hand. We're approaching an era where not just computer records, but augmented and virtual reality can play a huge part in the education and practice of medicine in the very near future. Amazing advances are being made in the areas of virtual reality in gaming, but now we're at the point where doctors can perform virtual surgery on deep brain tumors and plan their surgical approach before the patient ever goes under the knife. Now with augmented reality, we can not only project where the tumor is so the surgeon can have a visual guide WHILE he's performing surgery, but also where important blood vessels and other structures are located and have better patient outcomes. Carrying that thought a step further, we can apply VR/AR technologies towards educating the next generation of medical professionals and allow medical students vital practice whenever they so desire, without risk to any patients. This helps not only improve the student's knowledge base but also allows them exposure to many more procedures and patient cases than they would have normally been able to experience in the class room or during their clerkship. It is imperative that medicine and technology continue to work together in order to continually improve the medical capability of the modern physician, and because of this, it is important to have a cadre of physicians who are technologically literate. Conversely, it is important to have IT professionals who are medically literate so each can speak intelligently on the areas that intersect with each other. I have worked in IT for 29 years, and I had an opportunity to go back to school and finish a degree from Davenport University. At the time I thought it would be good as a resume enhancement vehicle. I was in school 20 years ago on a pre-med path and had to drop out to take care of my father. My father served in Vietnam and was exposed to Agent Orange, and as a result became very ill and passed away at 68. Now that I am back in school, I'm realizing that I have never lost the love of medicine and intend to go back down that path and go to Medical School. My plan is to take the lessons that I have learned in IT and apply them to Medicine. To some degree, I already have, working with hospitals, medical imaging companies, and medical start-ups. But I believe that by becoming a doctor, I can really make a significant impact on both IT and the Medical field by helping advance, promote, and evangelize new technologies, and act as a liaison between the two professions so that they both understand each other better. I once joked about becoming a "cyber doctor" when I was in high school, imagining a world where we be able to attach robotic limbs, and have mechanical replacement body parts; naturally, there would need to be people who were technically savvy to interface things between the human body and the technology. I never dreamed that I had uttered what would be a self-fulfilling prophecy and that technologies that I had only imagined would be plausible in my lifetime. The technology is here NOW, we just need people who are literate in both areas in order to help implement it, and that's where I come in. I need your help in order to make my dream of becoming a doctor a reality so that I can take my experience and apply it to medicine.