After serving as the Assistant Director of Adolescent Medicine at Staten Island University Hospital/Northwell Health for the past 30+ years, I have recently been elevated to Director of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine. Throughout my tenure I have helped to build and maintain our Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine into a cornerstone of our Pediatric residency training program. Board Certified in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, I have earned a Master in Public Health degree.While at SIUH, I have been an Investigator for 5 large, multi-year clinical grant-funded programs, allowing us to build a multidisciplinary team of 25 adolescent-centered providers. In 1992 I was instrumental in bringing New York State (Title X) family planning funding to SI for the first time ever; this program is still active and provides barrier- and financially-free confidential reproductive health care to all women and adolescent/young adult men across SI. Since 1990, the Division has secured over $31 million dollars in grant-funding to help support our programs.My most significant contribution to adolescent health and well-being was serving as Co-Chair of the New York City Department of Education’s HIV/AIDS Advisory Council, the body that was responsible for developing New York City's comprehensive and standard-setting HIV/AIDS Curriculum for Grades K – 12, which included the introduction of condom availability, into our Nation’s largest school system. I am also proud to have authored a critically acclaimed Op-Ed piece on this issue for The New York Times. It was an honor to serve in leadership roles on the Boards of the AIDS & Adolescents Network of New York and the Staten Island Teen Pregnancy Network. Working with these groups was a perfect complement to my clinical practice of adolescent medicine and those experiences were formative in my quest to become a strong and credible advocate for the health and well-being of adolescents locally and beyond.The awards and honors I have received best represent the professional I aspire to be: The Reilly Award for Humanistic Medicine (awarded at Hospital-wide residency graduation ceremony); The Michael Carrera Award for Advocacy and Public Service (awarded at Hunter Graduate School of Public Health graduation ceremony) and The Raymond Jacobs Award for Personal Contribution to the AIDS & Adolescents Network of NY (AANNY).I am extremely proud of what I have been able to accomplish throughout my career in Adolescent Medicine and I am grateful for the opportunities I continue to be given to do so.