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: Long Island Jewish Medical Center
Location: New Hyde Park, New York
Fellow Member Since: 2016
Current AAPA Position: Marketing/Communications Committee Chair
Please tell the AAPA membership about yourself, and describe your past volunteer work.
I am a pathologists’ assistant at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York. I have been an active member of the AAPA since 2015, acting as the External Marketing Subcommittee Chair from 2019 to 2023 and currently as the MarComm Committee Chair. I have a strong passion for advocacy of the pathologists’ assistant profession and the patient care it provides. In addition to my volunteer work with the AAPA, I have held numerous leadership roles in volunteer organizations outside of the PA profession, including Active Minds and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, planning and officiating events.
Why are you interested in serving on the AAPA BOT?
As a Pathologists’ Assistant, I think it is incredibly important to advocate for our profession in order to continuously have the recognition it deserves in the medical profession. I am very passionate about the profession and about volunteering with the AAPA to further promote the profession. Since my time joining the AAPA in 2015, I have shared and implemented new ideas that have helped promote the profession in various ways. As the External Marketing Subcommittee Chair from 2019 to 2023, I was able to engage with individuals outside of the PA profession, explaining our scope of practice and the value we provide in various areas of anatomic pathology. In the years I was in this role, I saw a change in how PAs were being utilized. More and more institutions utilized and entrusted PAs to gross, train residents, work on complex cases, and do things beyond the bench. A large part of this was due to exposure to the scope of practice of PAs, provided through resources created for the booth, and also just by speaking with individuals who approached the booth. While my impact as an individual may have been minor, I saw its value, and want to continue to make an impact, now on a larger scale, for our profession. I want to share my new and innovative ideas with the BOT and continue to make a positive impact on the direction our profession is going. In my current role as MarComm Chair, I feel I am not making as big of an impact as I potentially could. As a member of the BOT, I would be able to collaborate with others even more than I currently do, and I would be representing not just one committee’s ideas. I want to help even more of our members’ voices be heard. I also feel that the AAPA is the best resource available for our profession and its growth, and I want to help members of the AAPA who currently do not volunteer appreciate this as well. The AAPA has done so much for pathologists’ assistants, and giving back to this organization is incredibly important to me. I hope that if I am elected to the BOT, that I can get other members to also see this and want to volunteer as well. It is important to do more than just belong. Each member’s voice can really make a difference! And I hope to show this to members.
What is your understanding of the mission and vision of this organization?
The AAPA’s mission is to provide comprehensive professional support for pathologists’ assistants. The AAPA wants to best represent the pathologists’ assistant profession and its members’ interests by not only supporting the profession overall, but also each individual member’s needs as they serve patients and their counterpart, pathologists. The AAPA advocates for the members and the profession, as well as their education, and does so in a collaborative measure with the help of numerous volunteers in various committees. They promote the best and most current standards for the profession, to ensure the highest quality patient care is provided. They also support the expanding scope of practice of the profession and the goals of the individual members. The AAPA is dedicated to providing professional development through continuing education opportunities, networking, and leadership activities. Volunteers within the AAPA dedicate their time and passion for the benefit of the profession, to help fulfill these visions and mission.
What do you think should be the most important priority for AAPA?
There are three areas that I feel the AAPA should be most focused on. One is retaining members and getting more members engaged in volunteering with the AAPA in order to make meaningful changes and positive impacts on the profession. It is challenging to get members to want to volunteer. People have careers, families, and other commitments, making them hesitant to volunteer. They also lack the understanding of the role of the AAPA and of each committee, or the time commitment of each. If we can better promote what the AAPA does for the pathologists’ assistant profession, as well as what each committee does for the profession, we could get more volunteers to help tackle important tasks and goals. The second is the grossing guidelines. This resource is a widely used tool that is incredibly valuable for PAs, pathologists, and residents. However, there are some things that can be continuously updated, improved, and added to. Also, continuously promoting the grossing guidelines will help get the AAPA more recognition as well as have those outside of the PA profession see the value in the AAPA as well as PAs. The final area I think needs to be a priority is the title change, which is a project I am currently involved with. Our profession is widely misunderstood and undervalued. We are mid-level practitioners and should be seen as such by those within the pathology community, the medical community, and the public. Having a change to our title will help elevate the profession and provide more respect for the work we do regarding patient care.
Is there a particular area that you feel could be improved within AAPA?
One area that I feel could be improved is communication between volunteers within the organization. We come together to meet and discuss plans, which is wonderful! But we struggle to execute the plans because of lack of communication between subcommittees and individual members. Having more frequent conversations could change this. Something that may help with this is a new website, which is something I know we will be exploring soon. Maybe a message board for members to engage in would be beneficial if it is possible! Or bringing back working weekends – the most meaningful volunteering I did was a MarComm working weekend in 2020 right before the pandemic hit. We were so productive! I think increasing the frequency of in-person meetings like this could be helpful.
What is the biggest challenge your lab faces today?
The biggest challenge the lab I currently work at faces is fully understanding the scope of practice of PAs. Most of our pathologists work offsite, and while management is kind and supportive, they do not fully understand the role PAs have in patient care, or the tools and resources we need in order to succeed in providing the highest quality care possible. I am a recent hire at my job, and one goal I have is to better inform management about the role of the PA and what the day-to-day care we provide actually looks like, so that we can better collaborate on future projects together to improve our lab.