Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristen Schiefer.
Kristen, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I feel like I am forever seeking a challenge, which has led me to where I am today. I have both my professional medical career and my additional pursuits in my extra time that primarily include coaching for Z Pro Prep and running PA by Day with my co-founder. As a professional, I’ve always known what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to give back and help people in their most delicate and vulnerable moments. I wanted to practice medicine and specifically, I wanted to perform surgeries. After obtaining my bachelor’s degree, I went into PA school and obtained my master’s degree two years later. Since then, I’ve worked in multiple surgical fields including Orthopedics, Plastics, ENT, Urology, General Surgery, and today I work as a Pediatric Neurosurgery PA. I love my job and the variety that it brings to my day. I work two days a week in the clinic and three days a week in the operating room. Our most extensive surgical cases typically include removing brain and spinal cord tumors which can require hours of work with very few if any breaks. That’s my passion in life and helping kids and their families through such complicated diagnoses and procedures is incredibly rewarding.
Throughout my time in school and starting my career I was blessed to become a part of Z Pro Prep. This fantastic program that preps young women in their pursuits of becoming a part of a professional dance team has been a great outlet for my desire to educate and inspire other women. As a Z Pro Prep coach, I teach Interview skills. One reason Zakiya has trusted me with this role is my many years of pageant experience during which I earned my highest title of Miss United States International 2011. Teaching interview skills is my favorite because it is so powerful to be able to speak confidently and intelligently in front of a crowd. It’s a skill that changed my life and something I truly enjoy passing on to others.
When I worked in Houston, TX in 2018, I met one of my best friends and together, we created PA by Day. As physician assistants, we work really hard and love to spend our free time enjoying that hard-earned money on traveling the world. I’ve been to 10 different countries and counting. So my co-founder and I decided to begin sharing not only our experiences but our advice on our website PAbyDay.com. Our content spans both medical and travel topics that are meant to engage and enrich our readers with information that they can use both during work hours and when traveling. Creating this platform has been one of the most difficult and most enjoyable journeys of my life. I’m so grateful to have such an amazing co-founder and we have so many future plans for our brand. We’ve successfully collaborated with many brands and are looking to expand our own content into products that will be available for purchase on our site very soon.
As you can tell, I’m always up for a challenge and constantly staying busy. When I think of a trailblazer, I think of someone who marches to their own beat and doesn’t follow the typical path. I feel that I fit that description in many ways and am constantly fulfilling my destiny to be a trailblazer in the various paths that I’ve chosen for my life.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There are so many challenges that come with everything I’ve chosen to dedicate myself to. Becoming a PA to begin with took years of dedication and during those two years of obtaining my master’s degree, I was faced with what I can truly call a battle with depression. I went through a really tough time and had so much stress that I could barely see above water. Coming out of that took dedication to myself and devoting time to self-love and improvement including counseling which I feel like so many people are afraid of because they’ve never tried it. After that, I began this incredible career and starting PA by Day was a dream come true. In that my co-founder and I were met with many challenges. Building a website was completely new to us. Navigating what it meant to build and grow a brand was so much more complex than expected. We did so much research and still found ourselves being taken advantage of financially by companies that target new business owners like us. Setting a schedule of how we were going to stay consistent was our best decision and gave us both a feeling of commitment and equality in running our business. Today we are aware of our individual strengths when it comes to different aspects of having our own brand and we play off of those as efficiently as we can. While I could’ve started something like PA by Day on my own, it wouldn’t be what it is today, and I’m so grateful to have such an incredible partner and co-founder. If you can find someone like-minded who you love to work with, being a co-owner can be incredibly rewarding.
What should we know about PA by Day? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I’m most proud of the fact that I get to give back to my community in so many different ways and that I truly strive to be the best at everything I do. From my medical knowledge to my teaching skills to the content we provide at PA by Day, I’m always striving for excellence.
What do you feel are the biggest barriers today to female leadership, in your industry or generally?
I really feel like our biggest barrier as woman is ourselves. I’ve struggled myself with being bold, speaking up, knowing my own worth and not being afraid to make it known to those around me. Being a leader takes strength and guts to put yourself out there. That in itself can be a challenge because once you make a stand on who you are, you have to back it up. The first step in my opinion to breaking through that barrier is to consistently fight against your own doubts and in those moments, build up your personal positivity bank. The real world will knock you down over and over again. As a leader, you’ve got to know how to get back up and that starts with believing in yourself.
Contact Info:
- Website: pabyday.com
- Email: krislittle7@gmail.com ; pabyday01@gmail.com
- Instagram: @kristen.is.love ; @pa.by.day
Image Credit:
@riousshotme
@twoleesphotography
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