 Hello, my name is Leslie Mariel Gonzalez and I'm a perfusion student at Texas Heart Institute. I first got introduced to perfusion as a respiratory therapist and I had the ability to actually work on an ECMO team and work closely with perfusionists there on staff as a primer, so I was very fortunate to have a mentor kind of guiding me through it all since respiratory school. I didn't know at the time that perfusion was something that I wanted to pursue, but six years into my respiratory career I decided that it was going to be the perfect fit. I decided Texas Heart Institute because it was simply such a well put together program. There was so much history there as far as how cardiothoracic surgery came about and to be able to actually learn from the people who started it all just seemed like the best place to be. You know, you don't only get knowledge base, you also get that inspiration from where it all started and to see how people will still continue to want to teach and want to come and work here and want to pursue careers here. It's just amazing. It's an amazing opportunity. I wanted to pursue perfusion education as a student because I have been introduced to a lot of volunteer work in the past. As a respiratory therapist, I was actually a preceptor for respiratory students and I also got really in touch with the school that I had graduated from and would actually lecture their students and get to work with them in the clinic and I figured doing a mission trip was going to be that much more rewarding with being able to actually learn from others and still teach from what I know. So I first learned about the Amsec Profusion Without Borders Scholarship through one of my great mentors and teachers by the name of Deborah Adams. Whenever we first started school back in July, she presented this opportunity to us and mentioned how great of a trip she had been on because she had done multiple mission trips and to be able to see and learn from that just seemed like an amazing opportunity for me to actually apply. My name is Deborah Lowry Adams. I'm the program director of the Texas Heart Institute School of Perfusion Technology. I'm a clinical perfusionist at CHI St. Luke's and I love what I do. I trained as a cardiovascular perfusionist in 1983 at the Texas Heart Institute School of Perfusion Technology and I have been a practicing perfusionist and involved with perfusion education since then, so 37 years and still loving it. Let's see, my first mission actually was in 1985. I actually went with a cardiothoracic surgeon that was here training under Dr. Cooley and he was from Bulgaria and so at that time that was part of Eastern Europe and Dr. Cooley arranged for me to go back with Dr. Boy Jeff and train his perfusionist for a month. Very life-changing experience. After Bulgaria, I traveled to Hong Kong with Dr. Jonathan Ho into China who is still with the Texas Heart Institute in the transplant and research. I've been to Peru with Dr. Novik and then I started going with Dr. Novik with the cardiac alliance on multiple trips to the Middle East. So I've been to Iraq on four trips. I've been to Pakistan several times. I've been to Iran and I was planning on going to Ecuador before the pandemic. So I've been on several trips and I plan to do more as time allows. When Leslie talked to me about wanting to apply for the scholarship with Amsept and her interest in medical missions, I was elated. I'm always excited when I see the passion in a student's eyes that not only do they love perfusion technology from the onset of interview to wanting to give back more than just for self-interest. And so you can see it in the twinkle in her eye and her work ethic. That's the gift, the privilege that I have is being part of that journey. So I was thrilled and I was so happy when she wanted to do it. I was going to help her even if she didn't get the scholarship with Amsept and so that just was kind of the icing on the cake. You realize that you get so much more than you give. But you learn about your own skill set. You learn how to improvise. You learn how to troubleshoot. You learn how to communicate in nonverbal ways because sometimes that isn't the language that you know or they know. And you learn that we're all connected. Profusion without borders started all the way back in 2006. And it was an initiative that was created by Robin Sutton. She was one of our Amsept members who had the idea of creating a group inside the Amsept that would work similar to Doctors Without Borders. She held on to that position, shared that group for several years and handed it off to Jim Rieger, who is now the Amsept president. And then after Jim had shared that for several years, he handed that off to me. We originally envisioned this as a group that would promote missions activity and it would educate profusionists on the opportunities that they had globally to volunteer and to serve outside of their regular work in their local hospitals. Over time, the purpose of that group has evolved and the strategy that we have been taking is that everything that we do inside Amsept, we try to have it function within the main mission of Amsept. The mission of Amsept is to educate and to support profusionists around the nation. So what we've realized about profusion without borders is although it is a great opportunity to be able to serve others who are unserved in populations that have very little access to healthcare, it's a very noble effort and it's a real feel good activity and a charitable deed. But what we've also been aware of is that it's an incredible educational opportunity for profusionists because many times what happens is that when we're walking into third world countries that don't have a lot of access to medical services and medical supplies, in reality it's a lot like stepping back two or three decades into the past. Brian is a very active member, Brian Forsberg, a very active member in our group and he works with the Novik Global Cardiac Alliance. They have sponsored several of our missions, the majority of them and he's been a very active member and we've been so grateful for all of his help. Myself, I work with a charity that's called Cardio Start and we don't have quite the production that the GCA does but we go out right now on average between three to five times a year to different sites. I will say that missions itself, the entire strategy is an evolving project and it's been interesting to see how it has changed over the decades. My first mission was to Peru and I only did one. I went out, it would have been about 15 years ago now and I went with Cardio Start, it was the greatest experience I've ever had and I still got a photo of the first patient that I worked on. I remember and I've never really lost track of the feeling that you get from taking the skills that you have and then being able to give them to someone for free. Each one of us makes our own decision on what we best think would be the ideal student to win that scholarship. And then what we do is we go through all of the applications, we process our ideas together and then we meet over the course of several weeks and make a collaborative decision on who's going to be the winner of the application. I can tell you that for myself what I'm often looking for is somebody who really gets the concept of what the award is for. And I look a lot at previous volunteer activity because somebody who has been volunteering in the past is somebody I know has the right motivation and they're in it for the right reasons. I also look at somebody who has the maturity to realize that they're going to learn something as part of this process that they're going to be able to apply to their career down the road. And then I also look for somebody who's going to be able to have the maturity that they're going to be able to hand that off to their other peers as well. And of all the committees that you can serve on inside our national society I honestly think this is one of the most rewarding because at the end of the day we have this great opportunity and we're able to hand it off to somebody. The one thing we regret is that we can't just hand it off to everyone because every single year I am so amazed at the quality of the applicants that come out and applications that we receive. But it's a wonderful feeling to work with these students that they are so bright and so motivated. We've been able to do this ten times now. Ten years we've been able to give out this scholarship. At this point we have given it out to eight different schools of the profusion schools around the nation. Those students have been able to have their mission experience in countries around the world including Asia, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe. We had students that went to Vietnam, to Ecuador a couple of times now, the Dominican Republic, Bangalore and India, Honduras a couple times to the Ukraine. We've been all across the globe that they've been able to share that mission experience and we've been able to do this with three different charities. We were so impressed with Leslie's application and I just wanted to mention that one of the things that really stood out to us about our most recent scholarship winner Leslie Gonzalez was she was a first generation American citizen first in her family to graduate from college. R.T. active in a research recipient of many awards. Everything about her just said motivation and I think to me that is what clearly made her so worthy of that scholarship. She was a self motivator that you could see was just pushing herself all the way through and accomplishing so much. That made me so proud of her and I was so excited to be able to offer that scholarship to her. Leslie, there was a quote in a piece that Texas Heart Run ran and Leslie had said that one of the most significant accomplishments that she felt that any person could have was to make a difference in someone's life and then be able to, she said the chain of compassion to be able to spread that to others. I would say what's so impressive about Leslie is the differences that she made in her own life as well. She made things happen for herself and motivated herself and challenged herself and I think that was just incredible to see and we were very, very happy to see her accomplishments. It's quite interesting. I have gotten some questions as to how I came about to winning the scholarship over everyone else but in reality I was just presenting myself. I was able to talk about my background, how I grew up on a small town border and not too many people are doing what I'm doing right now. So it's been really amazing. I chose Novik cardiac alliance because my background was in neonates and pediatrics. The fact that this group of very skilled physicians and surgeons and medical personnel have been established for over a decade was very intriguing. It was very intriguing for me to actually work with this team and actually see how well put together they were and how they actually accomplish everything that they do every single year for all these different tribes. I was able to go to Medellin and Tokyo in Columbia. We went to this clinic that was called Clinica CardioV, which is actually from what I came to find out one of the best hospitals there in Columbia to actually go get heart surgery at. I feel that I accomplished a lot while I was there. Not only did I get to learn from the surgeons and the surgeries and the staff that was there, but I also got to learn a lot about Columbia itself. I think my absolute favorite was just the atmosphere of how closely everyone works together. The communication in there was amazing. Once I am a practicing perfusionist, I would definitely go on other medical missions. The things that you learn from there, it's just stuff you can't get here. We're so used to using and being able to have the ability to have what we have. If you were actually the one living out somewhere in a country where you don't have the resources that we have here and you don't have the ability to have what you have, I'm pretty sure you would want someone to definitely come and help you out in the best way possible. The experience that you will get is unforgettable. The people that work there are amazing. They're extremely proud. I feel like it's truly a life lesson. Being able to get the opportunity to go and push yourself and push through these boundaries and actually see that there is more to life than what you think is important. Money comes and goes. People come and go. But you're time spent and you can't get that back. So it's important to invest it wisely in what you really want to do.