“It’s been a privilege to work with such dedicated people," she says.
When Andrea Brown started under Dr. Cathy Craven, she was a volunteer with a science degree, hopeful that the position might lead to a job. “I was given a whole lot of photocopying and told that if I kept out of trouble with the photocopier, I would be given more tasks,” she says with a laugh.
She succeeded – and not just tasks, but a whole career followed. This month, Brown celebrated 25 years working at Lyndhurst Centre under Dr. Craven, the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute Chair in Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation and Senior Scientist at KITE.
Brown is now working as an Implementation & Evaluation Specialist & National Mentor for the Spinal Cord Injury Implementation & Evaluation Quality Care Consortium, a network of rehabilitation facilities and community organizations that works to improve care for people with spinal cord injuries.
Her hard work has been crucial in helping The CravenLAB and Lyndhurst succeed, says Dr. Craven. “Andrea can be relied upon to deliver regardless of the challenge presented, and to acknowledge and support colleagues, patients and caregivers while doing so! My research program has grown exponentially as a direct result of her sustained excellence, ability to mentor others and commitment to the spinal cord injury community,” she says.
Brown’s first job was as a research assistant for a study under Dr. Craven that investigated whether having patients use a standing frame would increase bone density. After that, she moved to the bone density lab, where she did bone density testing and promoted the importance of bone health during events like osteoporosis month.
Working with patients, often one-to-one, and having the chance to hear their stories has been very rewarding, says Brown, adding that it’s made her more sensitive to both suffering and resilience. “Being able to see how people go from the absolute bottom and then rise up again, over and over again, fills you with a sense of awe over the resilience of the human spirit,” she says.
She’s also grateful to have had the chance to work with a wide variety of trainees, students, post-docs and researchers – many of whom have kept in touch and even returned to work at Lyndhurst. “Even though I’ve stayed in one place, it hasn’t felt like that, because so many people have come through here and left their mark,” she says. “It’s been a privilege to work with such dedicated people the whole way through.”