We would like to encourage all Fellow members to participate in the 2025 AAPA Board of Trustees (BOT) election. Voting will be open throughout the month of September 2024. All Fellow members are invited to cast their vote online via SurveyMonkey. Please check your email for the ballot invite. If you did not receive – or cannot locate – the ballot invite, please contact us at [email protected] for alternate means to vote.
To learn more about a candidate, click on their name above to be taken to their feature page. For this election, you will be able to cast your vote for up to three candidates.
Results will be announced in October, and elected members will begin their terms in January 2025.
Thank you in advance for your participation!
Organization: University of Chicago
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Fellow Member Since: 2010
Current AAPA Position: Ad Sales Subcommittee Chair
Please tell the AAPA membership about yourself, and describe your past volunteer work.
Currently, I am the Technical Director for the Human Tissue Resource Center (HTRC) at the University of Chicago (UC). Prior to this role, I was the Supervisor of Surgical and Autopsy Pathology at UChicago Medicine for three years. I received a Master of Healthcare Administration degree from Valparaiso University in 2022 and a Master of Science in Pathologists’ Assistant Studies from Rosalind Franklin University in 2010.
I have been an AAPA fellow member since I graduated PA school. My first volunteer experience with the AAPA was as the Grossing Guidelines gallbladder subsection author and editor from 2015-2023. For the Marketing and Communications Committee, I have helped with Advertising Sales since 2017 and have served as the Ad Sales subcommittee chair since 2019. I like to help promote the profession by staffing AAPA booths at conferences hosted by PA-relevant organizations such as the APC (Association of Pathology Chairs), USCAP (United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology), and ASCP (American Society of Clinical Pathology) since 2018. I also help the Meetings committee with speaker recruitment for conferences in Chicago.
Beyond the AAPA, I have been a CAP inspector since 2019. Last year, I was recognized as one of ASCP’s Top 40 Under Forty honorees. Outside of professional organizations, I am also active in my community. I sat on the Board of Directors for a youth organization, Project: VISION, for five years from 2015-2020, and now, I am on the Associate Board of Directors for the Chinese American Museum of Chicago since 2022. I recently signed up to be a Team Parent for my son’s tee ball team and the Committee Chair for his Cub Scout pack. I enjoy staying busy and spending time with my son, my community, and my PA and biobanking colleagues.
Why are you interested in serving on the AAPA BOT?
I have been involved with the AAPA since 2015 because I want to see the pathologists’ assistant profession continue to grow and maintain a high professional standard. I am proud of our expertise and the work that we do for patients, but our work is still generally unseen and unknown. Outside of pathology, people see the field of Surgical Pathology comprised of pathologists and histotechnicians. I want to serve on the AAPA BOT to expand my contributions to our profession and increase awareness and recognition of PAs.
What is your understanding of the mission and vision of this organization?
The mission and vision of the AAPA is to support PAs professionally and to help us grow and adapt to healthcare needs. The AAPA was created by PAs, for PAs, and continues to exist because of volunteer PAs. The organization has achieved so much and continues to help PAs everywhere because of all the time and efforts of past and present volunteer PAs!
What do you think should be the most important priority for AAPA?
The most important priority for the AAPA now should be to increase awareness and recognition of our profession. As our profession is evolving with changes in Anatomic Pathology workflows (i.e. digital pathology, molecular pathology, and even AI) and residency training, the organization needs to lead the profession to take on the developing role as the sole gross pathology experts and pursue a more appropriate title, pay, and benefits to go with the evolving responsibilities. We need to continue to work with governmental and regulatory organizations, such as CLIA and CAP, to advocate for grossing personnel standards to recognize pathologists’ assistants as highly educated, qualified healthcare professionals alongside Pathologists and Pathology Residents.
Is there a particular area that you feel could be improved within AAPA?
Our organization can only be as great as what we put into it. I want to see most, if not all, of our fellow members to be actively involved in the organization. If every member contributes just a little bit of time, we can achieve so much more! I’d also like to see AAPA collaborate more with other allied health practitioners (i.e. Physician Associates and Cytotechnologists) so that we can help each other towards the same goal of being the best healthcare providers we can be.
What is the biggest challenge your lab faces today?
One of the biggest challenges that I tackled recently was staff shortages. As the cost of supplies and equipment is increasing at a faster pace than reimbursements for healthcare services, many healthcare professionals, including PAs, are asked to do more with less. Residents are dealing with this as well. As residents are fighting for better work hours and more pay, this in turn affects PAs. PAs deserve appropriate pay and work-life balance as well. I tackled staff shortages in my lab by communicating and being transparent with my staff and making sure I participated in discussions with Human Resources and other leaders in my department to come up with plans and budgets that allow for the highest chance of success for the entire department.