Joyce Tapley, Chief Executive Officer at Foremost Family Health Centers, in Dallas and Balch Springs, clearly remembers when she became interested in a career in health care as a young child, when her grandmother died of breast cancer at the age of 55. Joyce was only 8 years old and told her mother she wanted to be a doctor to help keep people from dying. A natural math whiz, Tapley enrolled at the University of Washington, where she embarked on a pre-med path. She also made time to exercise her creative side, as an artist and dancer. She shifted her career direction to hospital administration because she believed she could still have a significant impact on peoples’ health without necessarily practicing medicine. Tapley earned her Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from the University of Washington and went on to earn her Masters’ Degree in Health Administration from University of Washington School of Public Health, with an emphasis on Finance. In addition to her degrees, she holds four certifications in corporate compliance, HIPAA compliance and forensic healthcare auditing. Over the past 30 years, she has served as an Assistant Hospital Administrator at a major teaching hospital in Los Angeles, a Financial Operations Director at a teaching hospital clinical laboratory in San Francisco, California, and then moved to Dallas to serve as the Chief Operations Officer of a multi-specialty group practice which staffed JPS Health Network in Ft. Worth. In 1998, she became the CEO of Martin Luther King, Jr. Family Clinic, which is now called Foremost Family Health Centers with two offices (the MLK, Jr. Family Clinic and the Balch Springs Health Center), and has assisted many individuals in obtaining undergraduate and graduate degrees in healthcare, securing school loan repayment options, and creating training sites for those interested in completing clinical and administrative school requirements. Tapley attributes her professional accomplishments made over the past 3 decades first to her commitment to trying to follow the path that God sets in her heart. Secondly, she has learned to assemble the right individuals for the right positions; and thirdly, she has solidified great relationships to continue securing increased funding at every place she has worked. As an individual who lives with three chronic health conditions, Joyce is a cheerleader in spreading the word about the importance of preventive and primary care. She leads the health center according to its mission, vision and corporate values and she believes in hiring from the communities she serves, and in retaining and rewarding the high performing staff.