This year's storytellers include PCC President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Graham, who talks about how she found her lifelong tribe of friends after immigrating from Canada as a child and realizing that as a transplant, she didn’t immediately fit in. She tells her story with humor and grace and wraps it up with a rousing dance number
Dr. Ashley Bone, Chair of Psychiatry at Suburban Hospital, tells her story of alcoholism and being two weeks sober at her only medical school interview. She agonized over whether she would get the chance to be a doctor or if she would become a boxer, her only contingency plan. Fortunately, she is only now, years later, thinking about taking that boxing class. Mary Jane Joseph, a nurse for over 50 years and a PCC program manager, tells her story of how she fought for sustained funding to ensure sufficient cancer screening at Montgomery Cares clinics across the County. She shares some of her success strategies.
Dr. Sonya Bruton, CEO and President of CCI Health Services tells her story about spending 21 days in an Outward Bound program as a teenager. During that time, she felt her confidence soar from two to 10, and learned life lessons from the experience and her fellow campers, which she shares. Liza Greenberg, PCC’s new Director of Workforce Capacity, talks about her early nursing career, some of the missteps she made along the way, and what she has learned in her job to help her build a new program for training and supporting nursing assistants for the community.
LaTonia Rich, Co-Executive Director of the Tree of Hope Association, tells her story of turning her life around after the spiraling effects of "a drunken mistake." Described by the Montgomery County Police Department Crisis Intervention Team as a “force of nature,” she overcame alcohol and drug abuse and extricated herself from an abusive relationship. She became a certified peer recovery specialist in Montgomery County and is now 22 years sober.
The video of the 2023 Storytelling Show can be viewed online here. The show was live on November 15 at The AMP by Strathmore at Pike & Rose in North Bethesda. The Storytelling Show is the Primary Care Coalition’s annual fundraising event.