Biography
A native of south Florida, I grew up the youngest of 5 children, my parents having moved to Coral Gables after living in the Chicago area. My most important influence growing up was my father, with whom I took walks around our neighborhood nightly. At age 10 years, he (and I!) determined that the career that would most suit my interests was medicine, and thus my future was determined. My father died suddenly of a heart attack shortly after I graduated from high school, when my oldest brother was in training as a cardiac surgeon: both factors influenced my choice of cardiology. As an Angier Biddle Duke scholar at Duke, medical school at Northwestern, residency at Children’s Memorial Hospital, and fellowship in Cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital, I returned to Chicago for advanced training in the electrophysiology of cardiac arrhythmias. Twelve years after college, I started my first job at Cook County Children’s Hospital, and later, Children’s Memorial Hospital.
For 31 years of my career in Pediatric Cardiology at Northwestern, my passion has been the care of patients with the most complex forms of congenital heart disease and life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias. With my surgical colleague, we developed a new program combining arrhythmia intervention with cardiac surgery for older patients with “single ventricle physiology” who had undergone prior surgeries in early childhood. This combined approach extended life expectancy and quality of life for many patients from around the world. Unfortunately, when these patients gained weight, their hearts began to fail. About 2012, I began attending weekly Grand Rounds in Adult Cardiology at Northwestern, and learned about acquired heart disease, “Life’s Simple 7”, and the lifetime risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Here I was, one of the world’s experts on a very specific form of congenital heart disease –affecting fewer than 50,000 patients in the world—hearing discussion of cardiovascular disease that accounts for the death of one in three adults in the US, with more than 300,000 overweight and obese children living in Cook County–children who are acquiring the risk factors for stroke, diabetes, hypertension, coronary disease, and cancer.
During my tenure as Division Head of Cardiology at Northwestern, our Heart Center’s national ranking rose from #23 to #3 nationally, yet we were not adequately providing routine nutritional and physical activity counseling for children and families suffering from the chronic disease of obesity. Wanting more reliable and scientific information, I completed a Master’s of Science degree in Nutrition at the University of Illinois in 2018, and obtained Board certification in Obesity Medicine. With my background in pediatric cardiology, my new goal was to disseminate informed nutritional and cardiac advice to prevent the development of early childhood obesity, and the associated lifetime of acquired diseases, among inner city children in Chicago. The Covid pandemic intervened, and I am now in the fifth year of Long Covid, which has been life-altering. My current hobbies, besides recovery, reading and exercise, are horseback riding and art classes.