Mary Kate Osborne graduated from the University of Missouri with her BSN in 2007. She started her career at Northwestern Medicine in their Cardiothoracic Surgical Stepdown unit, then moved to Labor and Delivery and eventually Emergency Medicine at the University of Chicago. During this time, Mary Kate also spent 6 months designing and implementing a health education project in Cochabamba, Boliva where she discovered a passion for both teaching and advocacy. She went on to earn her MSN at UIC in 2016 and currently works as a Family Nurse Practitioner at Erie Family Health Centers. Mary Kate has been involved in teaching in the Graduate Entry Program at UIC since 2019 and is passionate about empowering the next generation of nurses to provide compassionate and evidence-based care to patients. She believes in creating a supportive learning environment for students where they are encouraged to practice critical thinking and challenged to consider all aspects of holistic patient care as they explore the art of nursing and their own unique giftings.