She received her BSN from the University of Minnesota and has had the opportunity to work in a wide variety of public health programs, in homecare/hospice, the hospital setting as well as four years working in a clinic/hospital in Quito, Ecuador. She received her Masters of Arts in Nursing in Transformational Leadership from Augsburg University where she focused on developing and evaluating immersion experiences to teach community health nursing in Guatemala, Nicaragua and the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota.