Anna B. Kaplan

I'm a first-generation American. My parents were Holocaust survivors, and my grandmother was a survivor of World War I and World War II. My grandmother survived with her healthcare experience, and she helped many others survive the war with her knowledge. She was the one who inspired me to go into nursing. I started nursing when I was 15 years old at Miami Children's Hospital as a volunteer, and then went on to be a nursing assistant. I was looking for a program, and I heard that FIU Nursing was opening up a brand new program. I was nervous about going into nursing, and I knew that FIU Nursing's new programs would probably help the students along the way. My class was one of the first to join that program. In the middle of my program, I took a leave of absence, and I went to the island of Grenada. My husband was going to medical school there, and I was assisting in several of his classes and just accompanying him. When we came back to the United States, and in that interim, the invasion of Grenada happened. I wound up completing my degree, and then we went back to Grenada for a couple more years. When we came back to south Florida, I saw a void in the cultural needs of the Jewish Orthodox community when it came to rehabilitation. I decided to open up a kosher facility in the North Miami Beach area. I ran that for about 15 years, and we helped a lot of people go from being in a bedridden situation back to working and being functional. We did a lot of good during COVID-19.