Lynette Hammond Gerido is doctoral candidate for Florida State University School of Information Ph.D. program. She uses computational social science, machine learning, and qualitative techniques to research health disparities and medical decision making among everyday people. Prior to doctoral study, Lynette earned a B.S in Bioscience at Drexel University. As an undergraduate, Lynette interned with GlaxoSmithKline and first applied her computational skills to pharmaceutical research. Also, Lynette served as the webmaster for Drexel’s College of Medicine while earning a Master of Public Health degree. Her passion for fusing information science with health continued as she moved to the DC area to begin her IT consulting career as a contractor with the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services. Later, Lynette joined the Center for Healthcare Quality at The George Washington University and completed the Master of Business Administration program. Since then she has been immersed in disparities research, policy, and information science. Her dissertation research leverages community partnerships with the breast cancer community advocates to explore the information needs of women facing genetic screening decisions.