Who We Are
Elizabeth Magassy Dorn, an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Washington, believes in the fundamental role of art to keep us connected to ourselves and others, and to bridge the gap of communication not expressed through normal channels of daily human discourse. Lifelong visual artist, sometime poetry writer, and active practitioner in local theater community, she wrote and performed 3 solo performance pieces depicting her journey through the medical world. After attending the NWNMC annual conference in 2016, Dr. Dorn and the University of Washington faculty development group CLIME, co-hosted the first Narrative Medicine Workshop and Grand Rounds by the founders of NWNMC, Drs. Elizabeth Lahti and Martha Driessnack. With ambitions to expand Seattle NM development, integrate NM activities into didactic and bedside clinical teaching at the UW, and bring art, depth and fun into medicine more actively, she and her colleagues curate and facilitate NM workshops and host quarterly medical story telling events to open to the greater community.
As president, her aim is the help this unique network of Narrative Medicine learners, teachers, and co -creatives remain functional and sustainable, and promote ongoing collaboration in our growing community.
Daena Goldsmith is a professor of Rhetoric & Media Studies at Lewis & Clark College, where she researches and teaches about how we enact identities and relationships through what we say and how we say it. Her work focuses on interactions from everyday life, including the conversations we have with a spouse or partner, the advice we give to friends and family, and the stories we tell face-to-face and online. Her research has examined how couples talk about lifestyle change in the wake of a cardiac episode, how couples support one another when one partner is treated for cancer, and how mothers of autistic children tell their stories. Additional information is available at daenagoldsmith.com.
Mike Kwaske is a senior project manager for Turner & Townsend Heery, focused on managing the design and construction of new public schools. In his role, he creates and manages the project budgets, budget forecasts and cash flow reports, and reviews and approves every contract, purchase order, and invoice. He lends his attention to detail and organizational skills to bring transparency to the financial side of NWNMC, and to provide a platform for forecasting the future needs of the organization so that we can plan accordingly and foster a sustainable entity. Mike is also the production manager for all the Narrative Medicine storytelling events that take place in the Seattle, WA area under the leadership of Elizabeth Dorn and Stephanie Cooper, and is an avid supporter of the NWNMC.
Stephanie Cooper is an Emergency Medicine Physician, mom of twin 12 year old boys, and avid supporter of Narrative Medicine in Seattle. She curates an ongoing live storytelling event titled “The Interstitium: A Space for Stories of Health, Wellness, and Beyond”, and serves on the board of the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative. She teaches narrative medicine to University of Washington resident physicians and helps bring storytelling to physicians at Kaiser Permanente in Seattle by virtue of their wellness program. She is trying to write “ER the Musical” in her non-existent free time.
Jenna Grauman recently completed her self-designed Master's degree in Narrative Medicine and Social Justice in Healthcare and Community Building from Antioch University. She is a collage artist and a Teaching Artist at UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in their Art Heals program. Jenna has over 10 years experience working in clinical settings as a chaplain, ICU Liaison, Unit Coordinator as well as a Transplant Donor Coordinator. Her art has been published in Intima’s Journal of Narrative Medicine as well as a contributing author in the forthcoming book Harnessing the Power of Museum Objects. Jenna was trained as a facilitator through NWNMC and has since participated as a facilitator for the collaborative.
Adam Hoverman is a Family Medicine and Public Health Physician with Multnomah County Health Department, where he combines primary care and public health practice caring for Immigrant and Refugee populations. He started as a paramedic in rural Northern California, before entering medical school at A.T. Still University, in Kirksville, Missouri, motivated to study osteopathy by Dr. Still’s pithy phrase, “the objective of the physician is to find health; anyone can find disease.” Adam completed Family Medicine Residency at the University of Minnesota, and worked with the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic before completing a Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Most recently Adam has completed a second residency in Preventive Medicine at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, along with a Masters in Public Health in Health Management and Policy. His research, teaching, and writing focuses on health systems strengthening via Community-Based Participatory Research and Community Health Worker training for improving Maternal and Child Health and Indigenous Health, program evaluation for Global Health training programs, and the co-production, co-creation, and co-design of health and social care. He facilitates narrative medicine small groups for students and health care workers, and writes poetry in his spare time.
Ellen Michaelson is a Portland physician and writer. She is the founder of HealthMax Primary Care, a Narrative Medicine practice in NW Portland. She was an NEH Fellow in Medical Humanities and has an MFA in Writing. It has been a long-standing interest of Ellen to see narrative medicine come to life in Portland. On faculty in the Division of General Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, she is joined each year by medical students who shadow her and take part in patient care. She has run writing workshops for medical students and for patients with chronic illnesses, and looks forward to involving the larger community in our shared stories.
Rosemarie Oakman is the Program Manager for Well-being and Community Engagement at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon. Rosemarie holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alfred University (2014), a Master's in Nonprofit Management with a focus in Arts Management from the University of Oregon (2020), and a Master's in Gerontological Studies from the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University (2023). She has over 15 years of experience designing, facilitating, and evaluating engaging arts and cultural programs for diverse audiences and healthcare populations. Her work is also informed by principles of narrative medicine, an interdisciplinary approach that values storytelling, deep listening, and reflection as components of care. By integrating narrative practices into arts programming, she helps create spaces where program participants, medical students, and healthcare providers can share personal experiences, foster empathy, and strengthen connections between individuals, caregivers, and communities. Rosemarie has co-authored articles in the Journal of Arts Education and the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships. In her free time, she enjoys traveling and hiking.
Maya Halpern first discovered NWNMC through attending Narrative Medicine Skills Training in 2023. As an anthropology major at Lewis and Clark College, she deeply connected with narrative medicine as a means of building more trusting medical relationships rooted in shared humanity. Centering her degree in medical anthropology and narrative medicine, Maya’s research explored how community acupuncture can expand healthcare access for both patients and practitioners, how pain and healing coexist in the face of intergenerational chronic illness, and how Moroccan women navigate their relationships to traditional medicine amidst growing access to biomedical care. She interned for NWNMC in 2024 and became the organization’s first Administrative Assistant in 2025. Maya is incredibly grateful to accompany NWNMC through an organizational transition and help offer meaningful programming across this vibrant collaborative.
Affiliates are individuals or groups with an active narrative medicine practice in their personal and/or professional life, including clinicians, health care, and public health practitioners; scholars and teachers; artists and writers; patients and their caregivers.
Our Affiliates create and lead trainings, education, and/or programming in partnership with NWNMC, and serve as ambassadors for narrative medicine and NWNMC.
Lisa Abia-Smith is Chief Curator of Education at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon and a Teaching Professor in the School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management. Her interdisciplinary work bridges museum education, narrative medicine, arts and health, and social prescribing, positioning museums as spaces for reflection, connection, and wellbeing.
She is the founder of the internationally recognized Art Heals initiative and co-developer of the ARCC Framework, used in museum-based well-being and medical education programs. Since 2019, Lisa has facilitated trainings and workshops with Northwest Narrative Medicine and curated the organization’s library collection, helping shape arts-based approaches to reflection, observation, and human connection.
Lisa collaborates with healthcare providers, universities, museums, and community organizations
nationally and internationally to develop workshops grounded in close looking, reflective dialogue, creativity, and restorative practice through engagement with art. She is co-author of the forthcoming book Harnessing the Power of Museums: A Guide to Programs for Well-Being (Bloomsbury/AAM, 2027).
Alexis Rehrmann is a writer, editor and narrative medicine practitioner who has pursued the connection between story and healing throughout much of her creative and professional life. Her first book Conception: A Miscarriage Journal, is forthcoming from University of West Virginia Press as part of Connective Tissue, a health humanities and narrative medicine series. The book introduces narrative medicine practice to a general audience and offers readers a way to carry their losses to term. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Portland Monthly, PDX Parent, Intima Journal of Narrative Medicine, the Journal of Medical Humanities OHSU Digital Collections, and Anastomosis Stanford University School of Medicine’s humanities and literary journal She is program manager at the Lewis & Clark College Center for Community and Global Health and an affiliate of the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative. She holds a CPA in narrative medicine from Columbia University and a BFA in theater from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Eden Bainter is managing director of the Foundation for Medical Excellence and the Oregon Wellness Program, where she enjoys making connections between big ideas and smart implementation. She worked for Kaiser Permanente and Northwest Permanente (Kaiser's physician group) for 12 years. Before that, she was education director for the literary arts nonprofit, Wordstock, and helped execute their annual literary festival, the largest celebration of writers and readers in thePacific Northwest. She has also collaborated with the Oregon Women’s History Consortium, Willamette Writers, and the Montavilla Farmer’s Market. After growing up in Walla Walla, WA, she studied government and women’s studies at Smith College. Eden coordinates NWNMC’s monthly Community of Practice and believes that stories, authentically given and received, are the most interesting part of being alive, period.
Elizabeth Lahti is a Portland physician and educator. She is Associate Professor in the Division of Hospital Medicine and Director of Narrative Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine, and a Scholar at the OHSU Center for Ethics in Health Care. She teaches narrative medicine and reflective practice to trainees and faculty with a particular interest in professional identity formation. She co-founded Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative in 2018 and served as President until 2025. She continues to facilitate collabLAB, a national community of narrative medicine practitioners, educators, and scholars. Elizabeth leads Narrative Medicine Innovations, an independent consulting service which offers facilitation, curriculum development, and project management. Her academic and creative work has been published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Intima: A journal of narrative medicine, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Journal of Medical Humanities, Social Science in Medicine, and Teaching and Learning in Medicine. She is the author of Harnessing the Power of Museums: A Guide to Programs for Well-Being, available from Bloomsbury Press in 2027.
Eden Bainter
Pam Belli
April Brenneman
Rebecca Harrison, M.D.
Zachary G. Jacobs, MD, FHM, FACP
Elizabeth Lahti, M.D. - Founder and Board President Emeritus
Katy Liljeholm
Alexis Rehrmann
Cirila Estela Vasquez Guzman, PhD