I graduated from Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in 2001. I completed my Internal Medicine internship and residency at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 2004. I then completed 2 years of primary care in Albany, Georgia as a National Health Service Corps scholar. I completed my Nephrology fellowship at Duke University Medical Center in 2009. Since then, I have worked in a variety of clinical settings such as private practice nephrology, hospital medicine, hospital administration, and skilled nursing facilities (acute rehab and nursing homes). I am board-certified in Nephrology and Internal Medicine. Along the way, I learned that despite medical advances, patients continued to develop kidney failure and need dialysis. Despite providing patients education on diet, exercise, and medication compliance, many patients continued to get worse. I learned that more pills were prescribed to help other pills and that other pills were prescribed to hide side effects of other pills. Although I was treating patients with chronic diseases, I was mostly treating acute episodes of their chronic diseases. After attending my first functional medicine conference, I realized that the functional medicine approach to health was the missing piece in the puzzle of healthcare. Since then, I have been applying functional medicine to nephrology.