Patients are people,
not experiments or data points.

Louise Lerminiaux is a speaker and patient advocate who has co-authored four scientific publications without a PhD behind her name. While she has centered her work on combating mental health stigma and gender discrimination in the medical and corporate worlds, she is also passionate about a few items. That includes fitness and sports, long-distance running, which she’s transitioned to coaching young girls, and collecting international passport stamps, seeking to double her total to 50 in retirement. Beyond simply traveling, she’s using her unique creative insights to build new programs and break barriers where others shy away. Driven by endless curiosity about different people, cultures, and customs, a conviction to make healthcare easier and more accessible, and a commitment to break from generational patterns of trauma, disease, and illness, Louise is living proof that there is another way.

As a second-generation female transplant recipient in her family due to polycystic kidney disease (PKD), Louise refuses to live in a confined bubble. Now, 17 years and counting after receiving her new kidney, she is a vocal advocate for changing global healthcare standards based on her personal experiences living in three countries to date. She candidly speaks about the challenges she and other female recipients navigate because of their immune suppression and medication side effects.

Louise also supports the broader acceptance of a range of integrative medicine modalities – western, eastern, holistic, regenerative, plant, and spiritual. The combination has enabled her to thrive after getting stuck as a caretaker at 10, leaving poverty at 17, and becoming the first female in her family to earn a Master’s degree.

Louise currently lives peacefully along the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica with her beloved Catahoula rescue Forest.