Early Life
Growing up, you could find me in the strawberry patch or jumping through the open fields of my family farm. We were fortunate to harvest a big garden each year that filled our freezer and helped feed us over the cold months, along with pasture-raised beef. I am the oldest of four children, and my parents instilled the values of hard work, honesty, trust, love, and respect. My ancestral roots trace back to my Scottish, English, and Irish family, which I have been able to visit and connect with. Growing up, we lived close to our small community of just over 150 people on land I have come to learn is Treaty 6 Territory. I spent many days looking for mischief with my cousins who lived close by or traveling down the path to my grandma’s house to see if she had baked some treats for us.
Education and Early Career
After high school, I finished a business administration and marketing diploma while working at the college gym. Shortly thereafter, I started night classes to become a nurse, following in my mom's footsteps. It has been this training that really opened up my eyes to deepen my views of health and wellness—to see it holistically. But it didn’t go the way I thought it would.
Once I started my nursing career, we were quickly scooped into a system that focused on individual body systems instead of the whole body, treating symptoms instead of root causes. I felt like I left a large part of what I learned behind and felt slowly disconnected from why I became a nurse. I wanted to help people get better, to heal, and to live a long life free from disease.
But over the past couple of decades, I have watched the health industry crisis balloon and then explode during the COVID-19 pandemic, from which we have never recovered. The pandemic only served to further expose how bad health and wellness are in this country.
Family and Life in the Yukon
Nursing eventually brought me to the Yukon in 2009, where I met my husband, Greg, a Vuntut Gwitchin citizen, while living in Old Crow. Together we are raising four handsome boys—my stepsons, Dustin, Nigel, and Dylan, and our youngest boy, Blake. Our family spends a great deal of time on the land at our cabin, a little way from Whitehorse. We also all love playing hockey and baseball, and our boys love golf! And to the chagrin of our kids, collecting, chopping, stacking, and restacking firewood.
With almost 25 years of experience in nursing, health care leadership, and First Nation health and wellness, I bring a strong foundation rooted in building culturally safe, people-centred health systems grounded with my values of collaboration, innovation and community. I hold a Business Administration & Marketing Diploma, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and a Master of Public Administration. I also hold certifications in Functional Medicine Nursing and continue to pursue education in whole-person health and longevity.
My career spans frontline nursing in northern and remote communities, over sixteen years in territorial government health management and leadership roles, and leading health, wellness and land-based healing programming for a local Yukon First Nation.