Leadership

Amanda E. Faye, Founder and President, is the founder of Beyond Medicine-Patient Advocacy, Inc. Amanda founded Beyond Medicine-Patient Advocacy after her own struggles navigating the mental health care system, and a case of medical malpractice arising from a lack of patient advocacy resulted in her permanent disability. Amanda openly shares about her ongoing struggles with mental illness with the hope that her openness helps to fight stigma and help others seek treatment. Amanda volunteers as a patient advocate and disability rights advocate, helping others understand their rights as patients and ensure equal access under the law for the disabled.

Professionally, Amanda E. Faye is the founder and CEO of Amanda Faye Consulting, Inc., which specializes in nonprofit development and communications with a focus on biotech innovation and medical research. Amanda is also a health education researcher, with publications in peer-reviewed journals such as BMC Nephrology, Patient Education and Counseling, Progress in Transplantation, and the Journal of Medical Internet Research. She has co-authored a book chapter on patient advocacy in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) (in press) and a transplant toolkit for ESRD providers available through the ESRD Networks online.

Crystal Anderson, Co-Founder and Secretary, has been researching racial and socioeconomic disparities in health care for more than 10 years. She has supervised numerous clinical trials testing interventions to reduce health care disparities for minority communities. Crystal has led clinical trial implementation at major academic research hubs such as the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Mayo Clinic, the University of Miami, the University of Southern California, and the University of Arizona, to name a few. She is an expert in organizational management and project implementation, specifically with behavioral health interventions. She also has extensive experience in nonprofit fundraising and grant writing.

Crystal’s interest in patient advocacy comes from her experience as the mother of two children and witnessing failures in patient advocacy within health care systems and from individual providers, in a maternity setting, as a patient herself, and a mother of two pediatric patients.

Crystal earned a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Arizona in 2011 and holds a Bachelor’s from San Francisco State University.