Kristin was born in Redmond, Washington and grew up beneath the shadow of Mt. Rainier in South King County.  She spent her youth engaged in more after-school activities than her parents thought possible, and somewhere along the way stuck on the idea of becoming a doctor.  Kristin studied neurobiology and history at the University of Washington, taking a semester sabbatical to live and work in London where she acquired a passion for travel, and has striven to keep fresh ink in her passport ever since.

In the period between undergraduate and medical school, Kristin worked full-time as a lab technician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, with part-time stints as a barista and nanny (thus crafting the perfect combination of her love for coffee and kids – both equally addictive stimulants if you ask her).  Medical school drew her from the familiar Northwest to the vibrant Northeast where she made a niche for herself, though never clear on the lawful way to navigate a rotary and eternally perplexed by the phenomenon “too cold to snow.”  Her time in Boston, while primarily devoted to her medical and public health studies, was studded with a variety of activities including slinging espresso at a neighborhood coffee shop, playing shortstop for the North End softball league, and setting for a YMCA volleyball team.  Highlights of Kristin’s medical school career include participation in a mentorship program for kids in chemotherapy, conducting a study on prenatal nutrition, founding the Tufts Sign Language Club, and traveling to Siuna, Nicaragua for an international elective.  While in Nicaragua Kristin wrote a public-health focused curriculum for Tufts with particular attention to maternal-child health issues, both because of her interest in women’s health, as well as to serve the specific needs of the resource-poor region.

 Kristin was drawn to Family Medicine for a number of reasons, one, to satisfy her appreciation for diversity which has been a prevailing theme in her life pursuits, and also because it easily lends itself to the practice of preventative medicine.  Kristin is very much looking forward to being back in the Northwest as part of Swedish Family Medicine.