“I have been a Nurse Practitioner for the Multnomah County Health Department for ten years. I work at the school-based clinic at Cleveland high school, which is the high school I attended. It means a lot to me to be connected with the community I grew up in.

In our clinic, we provide primary care to children whose families are struggling to make ends meet. It can be very challenging at times, but I support what it means to be a primary care provider in the school based health clinics, and what it means to support our amazing youth to make positive changes in their lives.

My path as a Nurse Practitioner started as a summertime volunteer within a nursing home when I was young. I saw some of the work that the nursing staff were doing to make a difference in peoples’ lives, and wanted to devote myself to becoming educated to make that kind of difference.

I am about twenty years off from retirement. I know that with my current retirement plan, I will have to work until well into my 70s to live securely on the money I am currently putting away.

If my retirement is cut now, it will severely threaten my retirement security.

It feels extremely unfair for state leaders to ask us to do this work for less pay than we would make in the private sector and then to reduce the retirement benefits we were promised. It’s not only unfair, but I think it is just wrong that some people want to reduce the retirement benefits for people that have dedicated themselves to public service.”