Shayanne Martin is pursuing a doctoral degree in health promotion and behavioral science at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. She graduated with a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University, with a concentration in community-based public health and global health, and a bachelor’s degree in health policy and management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a public health professional with 15 years of experience across the private, public, and academic sectors in the U.S., sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. As the mother of a child with a rare disease, she co-founded the Channeling Hope Foundation to unite families and researchers in the search for a cure for NALCN diseases and currently serves as the organization’s executive director. In previous roles at UT Health San Antonio, the UCSF Institute for Global Health Sciences, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Martin focused on health workforce development to improve health outcomes. After graduation, she hopes to become an expert qualitative researcher to ensure that patient priorities are represented in rare disease clinical trials and in drug regulation.