Claire majored in creative writing and literature at Dartmouth College, where she started out writing for and publishing a student newspaper. By senior year she had become a regular columnist in the daily school paper. While in medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, she enrolled in the MFA program at University of San Francisco, where she focused on writing memoir and narrative nonfiction. She completed both degrees simultaneously. Now a practicing pediatrician, Claire is also a communication coach for other clinicians in one of the largest medical groups in northern California. She teaches classes and shadows other physicians as part of Sutter Medical Group's Clinician Wellbeing Program. She writes a weekly blog about doctoring. In her role as Literature in Medicine Champion, she also leads monthly book groups, writing groups, narrative medicine classes and discussions of short stories with writing exercises.