I embrace all expressions of human diversity and take the nature of human communication—the basis of our capacity for bridging divides—to be the primary distinguishing feature of our species.  I embrace positive human interaction across boundaries, resulting in research and policy/guidance documents, as well as several poems and short stories.  My dissertation research examined how opposite-sex married couples communicate “behavioral involvement” with their partners and with the opposite sex members of other couples. My subsequent scholarly and research interests include community collaboration, community health improvement, health care governance, shared governance (in academia and in nursing), and health professional wellbeing. I teach health system courses in University of Iowa’s College of Nursing, including U.S. health policy and politics using global reference points, financial management, communication and marketing, and collaboration across professions and sites of care.  As Chair of the Research Committee for the Academy on Communication in Healthcare, I coordinate with the European Association of Communication in Healthcare and, recently, in planning for the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare.

My active interests in global matters began at 17 when I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and then completed the 56-week Korean language program at the Defense Language Institute.  While a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin, I served as sole instructor of the International Business Communication course, comprised of international students, and, for two summers, taught English and U.S. Culture at La Universidad de las Americas in Cholula, Mexico. In Spanish, I conducted a Puerto Rican health systems’ governing board retreat, examined relations between a Panamanian hospital’s governance and its federal government, presented a keynote address at the Columbia Hospital Association Annual Meeting in Bogota, and presented research at a conference in Malaga, Spain.  I served as lead-investigator for a World Bank-funded study on health care governance in four Latin-American nations.  I have served as a Conversation Partner several times for international students at the University of Iowa.  I am highly competent in English and Spanish, enjoy emerging competence in French, and can read Korean orthography but retained almost no competency in spoken Korean.