Helen Kang, PhD

About me

I help visionaries turn their ideas into reality.

Whether you are a healthcare organization working to improve the delivery of services and care in your field or a non-profit striving to shift systemic marginalization in your community, I can help you focus your ideas and communicate them effectively with those you want to reach. 

Ideas need both an open space to grow and evolve and a more structured container to become focused and refined. Ideas can push the limits of what’s possible, but they also need to be recognized as doable and relevant in order to garner support from others. 

It’s like flying a kite–you need to let the idea soar but keep it tethered to the ground.

With me, you will get a collaborator and someone you can count on to help develop your ideas and to articulate them in a clear and compelling way.

What I learned from writing a book

I am a health humanities scholar. In 2019, I published my book Medicine and Morality: Crises in the history of a profession, which examines the tension between professional interest and medicine’s moral imperative to act on behalf of patients and the public.

It takes vision, focus, and discipline to turn a large, complex idea into reality… like a book. Or a new way to deliver and evaluate healthcare. Or a community-based solution to address barriers to accessing basic necessities, programs, and services. 

Conceptualizing, implementing, and completing a large-scale project with multiple complex parts takes skill, confidence, and experience. One of the skills involves being able to shift between detail work and big picture thinking. You need to be able to see the forest for the trees, especially when you feel stuck, lost, or become overwhelmed.

Client reviews

Before working with Helen, I was writing grant applications on my own with little success. Balancing my clinical commitments with writing competitive grant applications was challenging and unsustainable. Helen helped me produce a better product with much smaller investment on my part. With the quality of her writing and her attention to detail, I was able to amplify my fundraising efforts. Helen helped turn my ideas into coherent and compelling language and took care of the details of submission requirements. Working with Helen gave me peace of mind and confidence in the final application.
Dr. Andrea MacNeill
Surgical Oncologist & General Surgeon, Vancouver General Hospital
Clinical Associate Professor, University of British Columbia
Helen helped me with writing book proposals for a manuscript that was based on my PhD dissertation. This was my first time writing a book proposal and my early draft was written in a language that assumed experts in the field as readers, but Helen’s advice enabled me to shift my voice and pitch a book idea for broader (potentially non-scholar) audiences. That would have been extremely difficult to do on my own, especially after many years of writing within a smaller circle. Overall, It was great to have a knowledgeable and empathetic person by my side who coached me throughout my proposal writing process, which could otherwise have felt intimidating and isolating. Helen was very responsive, organized, and thoughtful, and made my writing experience much more pleasurable!
Prof. Ayaka Yoshimizu
Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of East Asian Studies, University of British Columbia
I truly enjoyed the process of working with Helen to develop my website content. Words are my biggest weaknesses and Helen had a method of asking the right questions to help me be more specific about what I offer. She captured my ideas into words in a clear, cohesive, and organized manner. My website now feels very personable and genuine, which is important to me because my business is all about personal items. I’ve already started to use the language of my website to talk about my business with people. I’m very happy with Helen’s work and will definitely work with her again!
Anny Lin
Founder of Tidy Anny (www.tidyanny.com)

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