Amelia arrived at college as a pre-med student, then quietly walked away. Four and a half years as an EMT at Royal Ambulance changed her mind. The story of how the job she took to step away from medicine became the one that brought her back to it.

California's inter-facility ambulance system is at a breaking point. A bill in the legislature could change that. Assembly Bill 1328, from Assemblymember Michelle Rodriguez, is moving through the legislature now. If it passes, it will be the first real update to Medi-Cal rates for non-emergency ambulance transport in almost 30 years.

I never expected to find myself giving a presentation on grassroots advocacy in emergency medical services. But last week that's exactly what happened. I stood in front of national EMS leadership at the American Ambulance Association's annual conference in Las Vegas and made the case that our industry needs community organizers as much as it needs clinicians and lobbyists. I'm still kind of amazed I was there. How I Got Here Hi, my name is Marshall Woodmansee. My journey in

Kirsten Bolanos built her career on instinct, showing up for her partner on the rig without needing to say a word. That same mindset now shapes how she approaches People Operations, solving problems quietly, often before anyone else sees them. From EMT to systems builder, she is still doing the same work, just behind the scenes.

Every February, we celebrate the Black Americans who changed this country. We talk about Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.. We talk about scientists, artists, and activists. But we rarely talk about the men who invented the way we save lives today. Before 1967, if you had a heart attack in an American city, you didn’t get a doctor; you got a cop or a mortician. They’d throw you in the back of a vehicle and drive fast. That was

Transportation rarely gets credit when things go well in healthcare. Most of the time, it shows up as friction. A delay or a missed handoff. One more thing for stretched teams to manage. That shapes how we think about our role. We're not just moving patients. We're trying to reduce friction for the health systems we serve.