This healthcare Supermom is spreading seeds of beauty wherever she goes.
Directed & Edited By: Tamara Boxx for LUXYMOM® | Photography: Tim Gibbons Photography | 1st Camera Assistant & Videographer: Ursula Gibbons | Wardrobe Styling: Libby Romano and Tamara Boxx for LUXYMOM® | Makeup: Carly Philips for Duality Artistry
Bloom where you’re planted, the saying goes. It’s pretty straightforward, and yet we live in an age where we’re constantly on the move. So it’s rare to meet someone who has actually stopped to smell the roses in her own backyard, tending to them along the way and watching proudly as they bloom.
Such is the case for my dear friend and our resident skincare expert – Jennifer Sassi Pavich, MSN, APRN, CRNA – who has intentionally designed for herself a life she loves and that is as full as a peony blossoming in June.
I wanted to dig deeper into what has contributed to Jen’s success and happiness. She’s a woman from whom we can all learn a little something, and she influences others to want to become the best versions of themselves.
Full of focus, with an immense passion for what she does and a fierce love for her family and friends, Jen is more of a Superwoman, if you ask me. With her family’s support – she’s raising her three kids together with her husband Joe, while taking on medicine and business – she makes handling it all look like cake.
Currently Co-Owner of Laser Lounge Naples – as well as a practicing Locum Tenen Anesthesia Provider – Jen has found her perfect place in medicine. She’s pollinated her healthcare career with a hybrid of anesthesia and aesthetics. One day she’ll be putting people to sleep in the OR, and the next she’ll be perfecting the pouts of her lovely med spa clients.
One part science and precision, and one part art, both fields require complete focus and complete control. And the two fields allow her to intertwine very specific knowledge about the face and its muscular structure, giving her an intimate knowledge of its inner and outer workings.
A lot of people describe anesthesia as flying a plane. The rockiest part is take-off, and the hardest part is landing. It’s a true art to get people to do that very smoothly.
Jennifer Sassi Pavich, CRNA,
In this regard, her anesthesia work gives her a different perspective of the face when it comes to her plastics clients.
“I’m very type A and detail oriented, and I love the art of it. In aesthetics, the art is completely individual. But there’s an art to anesthesia, too,” Jen says. “A lot of people describe anesthesia as flying a plane. The rockiest part is take-off, and the hardest part is landing. It’s a true art to get people to do that very smoothly.”
As life often happens, Jen found her path to this happy place simply by digging her heels into her work and learning what suited her best.
“After school, I went right into the emergency room as a nurse, and from there, into the intensive care units, because I wanted to learn as much as I could. I wanted to be around the most sick, and the most challenging patients.
“Then, I went into the OR, into an open heart procedure, and I knew I had to be in the operating room. That’s when I knew I wanted to do anesthesia. I am just very Type A like that. I like the control. I knew I wanted to put central lines in people’s necks. I wanted to give medication to put them out, put A lines in their arteries, breathing tubes in their throats – I knew it. I was like, that’s for me! And to this day, I LOVE the operating room. Most people are very nervous in the operating room. But it’s calming for me. I love it.”
So, what is the ultimate force behind her career choice? In a nutshell, it’s all about finding what you love and knowing yourself.
“I’m a perfectionist,” Jen says with a smile on her face, as we talk about why her career has been such a good fit for her. I smile a little, too. I should’ve figured she was a perfectionist, but her naturally happy and easy-going demeanor deceives you in this regard.
It’s also this happy and charming charisma that keeps her patients coming back and her colleagues wanting to work with her again and again.
Jen has been lucky to find the career she loves. She knows herself and what she wants. And this is the ultimate advice she gives to her patients as well.
“Protect your skin and know your skin – these are my two biggest things,” she says. “Know what works for you. Know your skin, what it reacts to, what you’ve done to it over the years, if you’re oily, what makes you break out – some people are super expressive with their forehead or with their eyes…
“It’s important to know your skin, and it helps me help my patients. For example, when I prescribe Vitamin C, I can give it to you in a serum or lotion – some people don’t like lotions. It helps to know what works for you.”
Jen also understands that protecting your skin is equally important as knowing it. And she practices what she preaches, always wearing – and recommending – a strong SPF and staying out of the sun as much as possible.
“Your skin is your biggest organ of your entire body – you only get one skin. Had I known what I know now, what I wish I knew as a teen – I probably would’ve protected my skin more,” she ponders.
As for the advice she’d give her teen self (or any other teens now), having acquired an extensive professional knowledge of the skin?
“Use sunblock, and try not to sit in the sun for long hours,” she said. “As much as I love the sun – I’m from Florida, and I love heat and I love sun – but we have the strongest sun! Our sun is different than the Chicago sun! So you really have to protect your skin – it’s one of my biggest biggest things.”
Our lives are directed by the choices we make, and just like our skin, the choices we make are individual. Jen has made choices she knows will make her and her family happy, and this has allowed her to truly bloom and spread her seeds of beauty and joy wherever she goes – but most importantly, right in her own backyard.