Here at Canopy, we’ve assembled an amazingly talented and mission-driven team united to end the language barrier in healthcare. The Team Member Spotlight series will feature the Canopy teammates one by one to give you a behind-the-scenes look at who we are, and how each one of us contributes in our own special way to the Canopy mission. Enjoy!
Job title: Senior Director of Marketing
Lives in: Vista, CA
Education / Professional Experience: My professional life began in higher education, teaching at San Diego State University and in several countries including Mexico and Cuba, before I started my transition to marketing roughly 10 years ago. But my connection to healthcare and public health runs pretty deep. As a Master’s student, I worked on several community health projects abroad and my dissertation on physical education was heavily centered on public health policy and its intersections with race and gender science.
Favorite Book: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. This book had a tremendous impact on me in some of my "coming of age" years.
Hobbies: I think it’s fair to say I’m a small-scale succulent farmer at this point, as I've grown nearly 1/4 acre worth of them. But I also love home improvement, climbing mountains, and studying plant medicine. I also love being a dad, to my son Bodhi, our three dogs (Gus, Kunu, and Mary), and our chickens and being a husband to Elisa.
Interesting fact about you: In a former life, I was very involved in music and sang in several punk rock bands (and DJ'd a radio show in college).
What brought you to Canopy?
Experiences as a caretaker and father really reset my course in life. I felt a renewed sense of mission that wasn’t being met with the client work I was doing at the time (and that I had partially left behind as I exited academia). Canopy really fit the bill for me. Canopy wasn’t just another digital health tool; it was solving a need that was near completely unmet by other solutions. As an educator and as someone who grew up in a Transfronterizo community, the mission remains extremely personal to me and everyday I feel a great sense of accomplishment that I get to play a small part in ending the language barrier (and truly saving lives).
What’s the best part about working with healthcare professionals?
I’ve always admired the drive of frontline workers and their general selflessness. I like to surround myself with people who operate beyond themselves, and our clients, partners, and internal team are all second-to-none. It’s really refreshing and the most special thing about working here.
Lack of access is a major problem in San Diego and elsewhere, especially for undocumented individuals, but I wasn't aware the scale of problem and all of its nuances in the healthcare space. I feel one of the biggest challenges is that many organizations don't actually have the capacity to weigh the true cost of the problem for their patients or clinical teams (although they know their current attempts aren't working like they want them to). Interpreters do a great job, but there aren't enough of them. It's pretty easy to provide solutions, but it's more difficult to sell problems. Having said that, tremendous progress has been made in the field and there are many organizations diving in to solve their language access problems (and we have solutions for virtually all of them). We have a lot of forward-thinking partners that are making a huge difference.
What other volunteer work or causes do you participate in?
I am a former docent at the San Diego History Center and a former commissioner for the Historical Preservation Committee for the City of Oceanside. I also coach Little League for my son's teams.
Want to learn more about the rest of the team? Click here to learn about the Canopy mission and see the rest of our all-star lineup.