After working as a registered nurse at Petersburg General Hospital for one year and Central State Hospital for seven years, she retired from Kenner Army Community Hospital in 1992 after 30 years of dedicated service. In retirement, she worked briefly part time at John Randolph Nursing Home.
It was my deep interest in miRNAs and other non-coding RNAs which drove me to continue my career as a researcher under the supervision of Dr Chris L. Murphy (Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford) studying the role of miRNAs in cartilage function. During my three years in this lab, we defined miRNAs altered during chondrocyte de-differentiation and unravelled the specific function that miR-145 and miR-1247 have during this process.