She has been a nurse for 31 years and has spent 29 of those years caring for people with cancer in a variety of settings. Her first oncology experience was as a nurse in radiation oncology in the 1970s when oncology nursing as a subspecialty was in its infancy. Over the years, she has established an outpatient oncology program within a health maintenance organization, worked as part of a bone marrow transplant team, was a nurse practitioner in a private hematology/oncology practice, and worked as a medical science liaison for a pharmaceutical company.