About Me

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Thanks for visiting my website and taking some time getting to know me and my work. 

Curiosity is my engine. Over my career and life, I've channeled curiosity to use it to make medicine better for doctors and healthcare better for patients. 

I’m a pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay Area who believes healthcare should be both excellent and humane. I am in the Kaiser Permanente Health System and part of The Permanente Medical Group, where I care for children from birth through 18—including a subpopulation of teens with eating disorders.*

Shortly after I finished my residency, I found a used copy of “Complications” while I was browsing the shelves of a bookstore in Napa. I was blown away by the author’s honesty and clarity, and it inspired me to put pen to paper again and express my own ideas, feelings opinions and experiences of being a doctor. 

What started as writing op-ed pieces for public radio and my local newspaper started to grow. I was asked by Salon to write two columns. First, ”Vital Signs” in which I examined topics including the impact of the Internet on medicine, the “controversy” about childhood vaccines, health care policy, reform and other issues of the day. Then I wrote “PopRx” a column that focused on the intersection between popular culture and medicine. I also expanded my writing to the pages of many other online and print publications. Writing helps me ask better questions. Better questions make care better.

That same curiosity pulled me into leadership. I partner with clinicians, nurses, and technologists across our integrated, multi‑specialty system to improve how we care for nearly five million patients. Using Lean/Continuous Improvement, we turn good ideas into daily routines that stick—so reliability isn’t a heroic act; it’s the norm.

As a technology leader, I helped build and scale telehealth—video visits, remote patient monitoring, and digital questionnaires—and worked to advance equity by integrating video interpreters and piloting AI‑assisted translation tools. Families get the right help faster, in the language they understand.

I still wonder, ask questions, and write to make sense of the craft of medicine—and I now co‑host a podcast with a colleague to open the black box of clinical decision‑making and improvement. I hope you enjoy listening.

*Disclaimer: Except for my academic articles and some speaking engagements, I speak for myself here and not for my health system or medical group.