Elissa Eisele - “Amber Josoff Supports our Soldiers”

Amber Josoff Supports our Soldiers

By J1 Reporter Elissa Eisele

At 18 you are about to experience one of the biggest milestones in your life: graduation. As you look around at the people you’ve grown up with your entire life, a well deserved sense of accomplishment and uncertainty starts to surround you.

Suddenly, you are hit with that gut wrenching thought that even though you might have grown up with all of these people, you never really got the chance to know them, and you might never see them again.

This was not the same glorified experience for Amber Josoff when she graduated high school. Josoff is from the very small town of Mead, Neb.; current population 609 people. And when looking up at the familiar faces on her graduation day she was met with the faces of the 13 other students from her class graduating that year.

She wasn’t worried about missing out on the different unique personalities, and interests of her other peers. In fact it was quite the opposite in Mead, “You knew everyone and they knew you.” But growing up on an acreage near a rural community provided its own unique opportunities for Josoff who remembers her childhood fondly, and recalled participating in everything she could throughout high school, “I was in cheerleading, basketball, volleyball, and was at every single football game.” But Mead was not the final destination for Josoff who would go on to do even greater things with her life then cheer on her high school football team under Friday night lights.

Today Josoff finds herself located in Omaha, Neb., population: 1.9 million. She lives here with her family of five in the suburbs of west Omaha it’s a pretty drastic change from the rural community she used to call home. Her dayto-day consists of working at the Veterans Administration hospital as a clinical pharmacy practitioner serving the men and women who sacrificed to provide the people of America with justice and liberty for all. But getting to the place she is now was no easy feat.

Josoff wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to be when she first entered college but she knew she wanted to be able to come out of college, “Trained and ready to help people”, which is how she found herself initially pursuing a career in nursing at Nebraska Methodist.

It didn’t take long for Josoff to discover that nursing wasn’t her passion and she ended up making the decision to switch careers and get a degree in the pharmaceutical department. Josoff recalled how nerve racking deciding to make the switch was since she couldn’t be assured that she would get admitted into pharmacy school. Getting in was just the tip of the iceberg, the next seven years consisted of countless nights spent studying, and Saturdays designated to taking tests that could determine if she got her degree or not. Once she earned her degree Josoff was faced with another difficult choice; continue her schooling to get her Doctorate in pharmacy, or use the skills she had acquired and get out there to start helping people. She settled on the latter, and now she gets to help people every single day, as well as coming home to a loving husband and three children. Even with

“I just try to keep my head down, do the right thing, and hope that eventually someone is going to notice”

a demanding work schedule she still manages to have more time and energy to give to her family.

Josoff attributes a lot of that ability to her faith, which is a huge part of her day to day life. She tries to always say a prayer for her patients, because “you never know what someone might be going through” and to Josoff the little acts of kindness can make a huge difference.

In the end, her decision to enter the workforce changed her life for the bettter, and now Josoff gets to spend her days doing the thing she loves most: helping people. When asked how she treats her patients, Josoff explained, “ Whenever I meet with a patient I think to myself, if this were a family member of mine how would I want them to be treated?” This tactic reflects the morals and values she lives by, most importantly being, “Treat others the way you want to be treated” followed closely by “Do no harm” Josoff’s life embodies these morals which are highlighted throughout her family and career.

Cheryl Eisele and Amber Josoff enjoy wine in Northern Michigan, in the summer of 2021