A Leader at Work

For me, leadership and impact extends beyond the workplace - it includes helping communities in need.

Hospitals in Guatemala are faced with a big problem: bed sores. Bed sores are caused by patients laying on hospital beds for long durations, and are generally combatted by nurses physically turning patient bodies. Due to low staffing and poor ventilation in many of these hospitals, this problem is exacerbated, leading to extremely painful conditions and in some cases death.

Our Project Alivio team is committed to engineering a device to provide both nurses and patients with a more comfortable and safe experience. As team lead, I believe my greatest strength has been recruiting and supporting new team members to make an immediate impact, with over half becoming further invested through leadership positions. We traveled to Guatemala for the first time in 5 years, where we established relationships with the chief of the largest hospital in the country and a former advisor to their president.

I look forward to another challenging and rewarding year with Project Alivio. One patient said that our device is “100x better”, and hearing things like that drives us to develop and share the best product we possibly can for this wonderful community.