ABOUT US
Anu Gorukanti, MD (she/hers)
Worldview: Hindu/Buddhist
Anu Gorukanti, MD is a public health advocate and pediatric hospitalist who is passionate about health equity and racial justice. She went to undergraduate and medical school at Saint Louis University and enjoyed her time there building her campus Interfaith Alliance, serving as an Interfaith Youth Core Better Together Fellow, as well as leading Interfaith retreats in medical school. She completed her residency at Stanford University and is enjoying the challenge, growth and immense vulnerability of navigating experiences as a new physician-attending.
She is passionate about social justice and the role that reflection and contemplation play as building blocks for revolution (as inspired by many theologians, spiritual leaders, and activists before her). She strongly believes that understanding who you are, what you value, and where your values come from can lead to a meaningful and authentic life. She is deeply inspired by her incredible community of colleagues, peers, and friends and ultimately hopes that making spaces for reflection can lead to long-lasting relationships, renewed meaning and purpose in our lives as well as reimagination and revolution of our healthcare system. In her perspective, social change should always honor and incorporate both the individual and systems-based approach.
She is deeply grateful for her interfaith friendship and partnership with Laura, her community of friends, family, and her amazing husband who have supported her in trying to build a non-traditional career in medicine.
Laura Holford, RN (she/hers)
Worldview: Contemplative Christian
Laura Holford, RN MSN, is an oncology certified nurse, nursing educator, and patient advocate committed to working to reduce nursing burnout and moral distress, and the reassembly of responsibility and accountability in healthcare. Liberation theology led her to train as a masters prepared nurse at University of San Francisco. She currently teaches Ethics & Spirituality at Concordia University and works as a community health nurse.
Throughout her experience as a patient facing off with a melanoma diagnosis, and chronic health disease, she became increasingly interested in the whole-person / biopsychosocial approach to health and is interested in shaping health outcomes through behavioral, social, spiritual, and emotional determinants. Combined with her background as a campus minister with InterVarsity & lay community pastor of an Christian Interfaith church, she enjoys nothing more than accompanying people on their healing, reflective, and spiritual paths.
Like many mystics before her, she believes that contemplation and action cannot be separated and finds herself naturally helping others’ build reflective, imaginative, and spiritual practices to ground their action and work in the world.