During her eight years as a registered nurse in a hospital, Erica cared for people in crisis, and she saw missed opportunities for preventive and holistic medicine. In graduate school, she developed a passion for treating people in the context of their everyday lives. At the same time, she struggled to get appropriate care for her own thyroid autoimmune disease. This led her to work with functional medicine providers. She is finishing her doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin by researching integrative medicine topics. One of her two daughters is on the autism spectrum.