About Leslie

I’m Leslie, a CVICU nurse and urban planner at heart. Through storytelling, I examine the intersections of critical care and our built environments through a systems lens. I believe that good design not only makes life better, it keeps us alive.

I earned my Bachelor of Arts in Public and Urban Affairs from Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies with a minor in Political Science and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree from Old Dominion University: training that shaped how I understand systems, power, and the built environment as forces that profoundly influence human outcomes. Before becoming a nurse, I was a Histology Assistant in an Anatomic Pathology lab in the hospital; work that involved autopsies and gross dictation of biopsies.

Years later, I came to nursing through a systems lens, drawn to critical care as the point where long-standing social, environmental, and biological stressors converge.

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About Vaso & Vibes

Through storytelling, Vaso & Vibes explores nursing as both a technical and moral practice, grounded in relational systems thinking. It bridges nursing theory, urban planning ideology, and bedside practice to examine how environments (like ICUs, hospitals, neighborhoods, and policies) shape who becomes critically ill and how healing unfolds. Sometimes that healing looks like dying a good death, and some of the stories dare to explore that.