Carissa was born and raised in Louisville, KY where she attended Lindsey Wilson College for BS in psychophysiology, University of Louisville for her BSN, Western Governors for her MSN and Murray State University for her EdD. Carissa taught within the Jefferson County Public School, JCPS, system from 2020 until 2024. She has worked in the emergency department at Norton Women’s and Children’s hospital since 2017. Her current position there is pediatric emergency room nurse. She joined Caris College in October 2024.
Carissa’s path to Caris has been unique. While working at Norton Carissa has created a quality improvement process to decrease door in to door out times in the emergency room helping care to start during triage. She worked in the adult emergency room full time until 2020 before switching to the pediatric side. Carissa’s love of the organized chaos in the emergency room has led her to serve as relief charge nurse frequently, be the ER representative on the evidence practice council, and to obtain certifications in both emergency nursing, CEN, as well as trauma nursing, TNCC. Carissa frequently precepts new nurses to the emergency room. She took this love of teaching to JCPS in 2020. Here she built a virtual allied health curriculum that met the KY state standards for a career and technical program. Her program comprised 8 classes with a dual credit option through JCTC. This program has served hundreds of students and upon her departure had a 100% pass rate in their state certification exam.
When Carissa is not teaching she is watching sports, playing PS5 or Switch, and collecting sneakers. She loves spending time with family and friends attending fire pits or game nights.