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Healthcare Stories: Joy storyteller reveal

In September 2024, the Resiliency Center, the Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities and UtahPresents issued a call for story submissions for their annual Healthcare Stories live-storytelling event. After receiving a record number of story proposals, we are delighted to reveal the selected storytellers for Healthcare Stories: Joy, which will take place on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025, at Kingsbury Hall. Unscripted, real-life stories will be shared of experiencing the impossible, witnessing the miraculous, working through tribulation or simply being present to the pleasure, people and generosities of the everyday experiences in the world of health care.

Mark your calendars and buy tickets to join us in February to hear these stories of joy.

See below for the 2025 Storyteller lineup.


The Storytellers

Amy Askerlund

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amy is an emergency room nurse for U of U Health, a fitness coach, an adventure seeker and an avid podcast consumer.

Patrick Ockerse, M.D.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patrick Ockerse is an emergency medicine physician who has previously worked for U of U Health and has taken a journey that led to working in Shiprock, New Mexico.

Emily Erickson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emily Erickson is a long-time employee at Huntsman Cancer Hospital. Her first shift off nursing orientation was the same day the hospital opened!

Phil George

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phil George is a nutrition services manager at Neilsen Rehabilitation Hospital who loves the patients he works with. He is an artist who hopes to have a post-retirement career sketching portraits- of both humans and pets.

Donna Baluchi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donna is an assistant librarian at Eccles Health Sciences Library on the University of Utah campus who enjoys making zines and going to all-ages punk shows.

Sashi Goteti

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sashi Gotei is a passionate family man, a lover of all things JRR Tolkien, astrophysics and Harry Potter—and professionally, he is a pediatric hematologist at Primary Children’s Hospital/University of Utah Health.

The Emcee

Katty Del Pilar Youd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katty Del Pilar Youd works as a program manager at the University’s Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute and is a wife, mama, polyglot, balloon artist and the proud daughter of Peruvian immigrants.