We all have different elements that make up who we are as people. And for the first two decades of my life, I had the hats that I knew that I could take on and take off. And then one day I learned I have this new hat and you can never take it off. I had to be very strategic about what I do. I have to make sure that I manage risk, and that is something I had to be so conscious of. I can be a business professional, I can be a sibling, I could be a wife, I can be a daughter, there are so many things that I can be and that I could focus on. But even when I’m those things, I have epilepsy. And it has changed my life that I have that over me every single day. From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep.

My name is Jennifer, and I am a relationship associate. I work with Silicon Valley tech companies, and I am currently living in San Mateo, and I started having seizures when I was 18 years old.

I either take Uber or drive to the train station, and once I get started at work, it really just depends on the flow of the day and how it goes. I currently have an accommodation in place where I work to certain hours and then I unplug and I come back to my house and finish off my business day here, just making sure that I can continue to perform my full-time job without having to jeopardize my epilepsy.

My epilepsy advocacy is one of the biggest things that drives me because it allows me to not focus on myself, but focus on being able to help other people. I am proud to say that I am a recent, uh, board member of the Epilepsy Foundation of Northern California. And I absolutely recommend people living with epilepsy and even those not living with epilepsy, caregivers, to reach out to the foundation and use the resources that are there.

My name is Jennifer. I have epilepsy.