Unexpected paths: OHSU alumni entrepreneurs

AlexAnn Westlake: Our Community Birth Center

When Lane County’s only birth center closed in 2019, the community lost a resource it had repeatedly fought to preserve since the late 1970s. AlexAnn Westlake, B.S. ’12, M.N. ’14, CNM, was determined to fill the gap. She spent the next two years as a fundraiser and community organizer, raising $300,000 to open a nonprofit nurse midwifery birth center in 2021.

Housed in a cozy, home-like building, Our Community Birth Center is built on the belief that pregnant families deserve a choice in birthing location and equitable access to midwifery care. In addition to attending births, Westlake and her team provide postnatal home visits, gynecology services, free drop-in baby clinics and wrap-around support for families. As executive director, her skillset has expanded beyond her midwifery training, from human resources and medical billing to fundraising and grant writing.

For Westlake, starting the birth center was personal. Growing up in Lane County, she loves caring for people in her community — and she gave birth to her second child at Our Community Birth Center. “It has many layers of special meaning for me,” she said.

Duane Pegg’s Cranberry Farm

Cranberry farming wasn’t part of the plan when Duane Pegg, D.M.D. ’84, moved to the small community of Grayland, Washington, to join a local dental practice. That changed when his youngest son, Connor, started working the harvests on a cranberry farm owned by his high school basketball coach.

Pegg and his wife helped Connor purchase his first 11 acres of cranberry bogs when he was 21. When another 11 acres came up for sale, they bought those for themselves. Over the years Pegg, Connor and Pegg’s oldest son, Jeremy purchased nearly 40 adjacent acres of cranberry bogs.

These days, Pegg enjoys spending early mornings having coffee with his sons before starting their day’s work, and when he retires from dentistry in 2026, the farm will have his full attention.

His favorite time of year on the farm? That’s easy — it’s the harvest. “It’s really cool to see the ‘fruits’ of your labor,” Pegg said. “It’s hard work, but it’s rewarding to see everything you’ve done for the year starting to come back to you.”

Winnie Henderson: Oregon Surgical Wellness

“I have a lot of ideas and curiosity, and that stems from being a scientist,” said Winnie Henderson M.D. ’04, Ph.D. ’04, R ’10, FACS, CGRA. “I think about medicine in a different way. I have transformed ideas into action to improve patient care.”

Henderson honed her unique perspective at OHSU, where she completed her M.D., Ph.D., general surgery residency and rural surgery fellowship. Today, it guides her approach to breast surgical oncology.

In 2021, Henderson and fellow breast surgeon, Christine Kollmorgen, M.D., FACS, founded Oregon Surgical Wellness (OSW), a comprehensive breast cancer center serving more than 400 breast cancer patients in the Eugene/Springfield region each year. Focusing on a whole person model of care, OSW offers innovative surgical techniques, genetic cancer risk assessment and management.

OSW operated independently for over four years before joining Willamette Valley Cancer Institute and Research Center in June 2025. The new partnership allows them to preserve what they have built while leveraging the resources of a large regional cancer center.

Amy Urban: Harmony Appliance

Positive Airway Pressure (PAP) therapy is one of the most effective treatments for sleep apnea, yet many users quit due to discomfort. Amy Urban, D.M.D. ’99, wants to change that.

As a dentist certified in dental sleep medicine and a PAP user herself, Urban understands the problem well. An open mouth during PAP use can cause air leaks, severe dry mouth and poor PAP compliance. Her solution, the Harmony Appliance, is an intraoral device that gently guides the jaw to a comfortable, closed position, removing one of the most common barriers to consistent PAP use.

Urban knows how to run a business — she owned a thriving dental practice in Austin, Texas, for nearly 20 years. But launching an invention was a new arena. “I had absolutely no clue how to make it a reality, but I also saw the huge need for this and felt a responsibility to bring it to market,” she said.

Mary Patzel: Frenchglen Hotel

When Mary Patzel, M.B.A. ’20, and her husband, Conlan Murphy, saw a call for proposals to run the historic Frenchglen Hotel in southeast Oregon, it sounded like a long shot. But with Murphy’s restaurant background and Patzel’s grant-writing experience, they applied anyway. If nothing else, it would be a chance to learn from the process.

A few weeks later, they were holding the keys. “We didn’t have time to overthink it; we were just in go mode,” Patzel said.

Built in 1923 as lodging for livestock purveyors, the Frenchglen Hotel is now owned by Oregon State Parks and operated by concessionaires. As the current concessionaires, Patzel and Murphy live on site with their two young children. The surrounding town of Frenchglen, with an estimated 12 to 15 permanent residents, is a stark contrast to their roots in Salem and Portland.

“It’s very remote, but by virtue of the work that we do, it’s very social too,” Patzel said. From March through October, they host travelers in the hotel’s 13 guest rooms and serve family-style dinners seven nights a week.

Kelly Aldinger: UpWell Psychiatry

Kelly Aldinger, M.N. ’20, D.N.P. ’21, M.S.W., PMHNP, has always been energized by tackling systemic problems. As founder of UpWell Psychiatry, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) practice, she is reimagining the mental health care experience for patients and providers.

“After witnessing so much burnout in our field, I created UpWell Psychiatry to make both accessing and practicing mental health care easier,” Aldinger said.

Grounded in evidence-based practice, UpWell Psychiatry is enriched by the perspectives each practitioner brings from their previous roles — as midwives, Army nurses, yoga instructors, anti-sex trafficking advocates and educators. Aldinger started her career as a social worker and therapist, in settings ranging from inpatient hospitals to backcountry wilderness therapy. She turned to OHSU’s nurse practitioner program to gain the biological and pharmacological knowledge to care for people as whole beings.

Kelly Blodgett: Blodgett Dental Care

On the wall at Blodgett Dental Care, a map glitters with gold pins scattered across the U.S. and beyond. Each pin represents a patient’s journey to the Portland practice.

Known for his holistic and biological approach to dentistry, Kelly Blodgett, D.M.D. ’99, focuses on patients seeking relief from recurring infections, discomfort or other health concerns related to past dental work. He has crafted a unique patient experience, featuring a spa-like atmosphere, nutrition counseling and acupuncture meridian assessment. While it’s unusual to see these offerings in a dental practice, at its core, Blodgett’s work is about listening to his patients.

“There’s so much power in listening to another person. Nobody knows what your body feels like better than you do,” Blodgett says.

Blodgett’s patient-centered views trace back to his original career path: psychology. Poised to begin a psychology graduate program, he felt a spiritual call to pursue dentistry instead. He changed course and graduated from the OHSU School of Dentistry in 1999. An emphasis on empathy and the emotional aspects of care remains central to his practice.

Erin Collins: The Peaceful Presence Project

Over her 16 years as a hospice nurse, Erin Collins, M.N.E. ’23, RN, CHPN, observed that many of her patients were afraid, in denial and unprepared for death. These encounters set her on a path toward reimagining the way we talk about and experience the final stage of life.

In 2018, Collins co-founded The Peaceful Presence Project (TPPP), a nonprofit organization that provides nonmedical support to individuals and families facing serious and terminal illness. TPPP takes a public health approach to palliative care, offering end-of-life doula services, holistic end-of-life planning, resources and education for community members and clinicians.

“It’s not just health and social services that need to step in,” Collins says. “It’s all of our responsibility to support one another in the community during times of illness and loss.”

In recent years, TPPP has made meaningful progress toward building a statewide network of community-based palliative care. With grants from The Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation and The Roundhouse Foundation, they have launched three pilot communities and are working to build an online referral platform.

Karen Thiebes: Simplified Science Publishing

As a scientific illustrator, Karen Thiebes, Ph.D. ’15, brings together a unique combination of skills to create compelling visuals for scientists and researchers. She sees herself as a translator, able to distill complex information into easy-to-understand images that improve her clients’ chances of publication or grant approval.

Thiebes discovered her talent for scientific illustration while completing her Ph.D. in neuroscience at OHSU. She started taking graphic design classes at night, and a vision for her future business began to take shape. Soon after graduating, she landed her first client — an OHSU researcher — prompting her to fast-track the launch of Simplified Science Publishing.

Today, Thiebes is a full-time freelance illustrator with clients around the world. As a neuroscientist, she brings a deep understanding of how people perceive and process visual information. Her Ph.D. sets her apart, allowing her to quickly build trust with clients. “They can speak ‘science’ to me,” she said.