Coach Virginia
Coach Virginia was commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy in 1988. Prior to that, she served as faculty professor at Rancho Santiago College and also taught Adult Education for Newport-Mesa and Capistrano Unified School Districts. During her twenty year career as Naval Officer, she served in multiple leadership positions supporting highly visible Military Medicine programs. Some of her tour of duties include: Head, Outpatient/Ambulatory Care, Naval Hospital, Long Beach; Director of Health Care Operations (Plan and Analysis), Naval Hospital, Camp Pendleton; Officer In Charge, Marine Corps Air Station, El Toro, CA; Executive Assistant, Chief Operational Medicine, Headquarters Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Washington DC; and Deputy Director, Community and Occupational Health, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD. Virginia also served as the Medical Intelligence officer on board USNS COMFORT and USNS MERCY during the Persian Gulf War and in support of several international humanitarian missions and joint exercises with former Soviet Union countries located along the Baltic Sea.
Since transferring to the Naval Reserve in 1999 Coach Virginia has been involved with coaching senior and mid level leadership on various areas of Organizational Development/Redesign, Strategic Planning, Process Improvement, Knowledge Management, Benchmarking, Diversity, Competitive and Business Intelligence, Team Building, etc. Virginia earned the “Distinguished Graduate” honor from the National Defense University, Information Resource and Technology Management, Washington DC as Chief Information Officer (CIO) which earned her a permanent membership in the Federal CIO roundtable. Prior to retiring with the rank of Commander in Sept 2008, she had been assigned to Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego as Research Medical Liaison officer.
As a civilian, Coach Virginia held various Health Care Executive positions: Three years as Senior Director of Membership and Constituent Affairs for the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN) headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California. AACN is the largest specialty nursing professional association with over 60,000 members and 250 Chapters nation-wide. In May 2004, she was recruited and appointed as CEO for the American College for the Advancement of Medicine (ACAM), a physician-based nationally recognized Integrative Medicine organization that educates physicians on the latest alternative, complementary and integrative research and treatment modalities. In 2006 she joined Monarch HealthCare, Inc. to head the clinical operations and performance improvement efforts at their headquarters office in Irvine, California. Coach Virginia is also a faculty member of Cal State University, Long Beach where she has been teaching graduate and undergraduate courses (on campus and online formats) for the Professional Studies Department since 2000.
Virginia’s education includes an MPA from Cal Sate Long Beach, and she is graduated from the Healthcare Executive Institute program - Graduate School of Management, University of California in Irvine (UCI). She has completed graduate work in Adult Education also from UCI, and has earned a Bachelor degree in Industrial Psychology from Catholic University, Lima, Peru.
More recently, Coach Virginia completed a Health and Wellness training program from WellCoaches, Inc which is certified by the American College of Sports Medicine. She owns Wellness Vibrations Consulting and her clients include physicians, private clients and employers. In addition, she provides Health Coaching services to several Health/Wellness organizations. Coach Virginia is a Reiki Level 2 Practitioner and has completed level 3 Healing Touch practitioner program. Her training also includes: Nutraceuticals/Supplements and Health, Mindful Meditation (UCI), Stress Reduction Techniques, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).
Virginia was invited to attend the first high level Summit in Integrative Medicine hosted by the Institute of Medicine and sponsored by the Bravewell Foundation in Feb 2009. This gathering main objective was to design a new healthcare model in America, one that incorporates Integrative Medicine approaches to healing and treating disease.
Coach Virginia joined the EmpowHer team in Nov 2008 as moderator and was accepted into the Doctor of Education in Holistic Health and Wellness program at Clayton College of Natural Health in April 2009.
Coach Virginia is married and cares for her husband Jerry (a retired naval officer) who was diagnosed Gulf-War ALS (Lou Gerhig’s disease) in 2006. They have two children 15 and 13 years old respectively. They live in San Clemente, California.
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