Meet Your New Board Members: Kathy Baker, JD, Daria Ma, MS, LCGC, MSHS, and Catherine Smith, MS, LCGC

Kathy Baker, JD, is honored to provide a “patient voice” as the ABGC Board’s sole public member. Her goal as the founder and executive director of My Faulty Gene, a nonprofit heredity cancer organization, is to provide education and assistance with germline genetic testing.

Baker’s passion for germline genetics developed when she learned about her own heredity cancer predisposition syndrome, and she credits genetic testing with saving her life. She created the Family Gene Share video series (FamilyGeneShare.org)to highlight the stories of individuals impacted by hereditary cancer predisposition syndromes and to stress the importance of cascade testing to “reach the ‘low-hanging fruit’ on the tree.”  

She is a member of the Executive Advisory Board of ConnectMyVariant, the Board of Directors of Say YES to Hope, the Advisory Board of Myriad Oncology, the Early Action Priority Team of the ACS National Breast Cancer Roundtable, the Interact Coalition, is the ACT Lead with the ACS Cancer Action Network for her congressional district and is the patient advocate mentor for Dr. Long Nguyen’s promising Susan G. Komen–funded research in triple-negative breast cancer.

Baker is the mother of three sons. Before her cancer diagnosis and subsequent advocacy work, she worked as a musician, a bakery owner, a Congressional intern, graduated from law school and worked in the oil and gas industry.

Daria Ma, MS, LCGC, MSHS, joins the ABGC Board as a director and is a board liaison for the Certification Exam Committee (CEC). Ma is the cardiovascular genetic counselor at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where she works closely with patients and clinical teams, guiding the Cardiogenetics Program. The program has grown tremendously during her time there, and Ma is passionate about its mission to provide high-quality, patient-centered care.

As a first-generation immigrant and the first in her family to pursue genetics, Ma vividly remembers passing the ABGC certification exam. She describes the “sense of possibility” she felt and how it drives her to give back by “championing fair and rigorous certification processes that uphold excellence while helping qualified professionals succeed.” Her goal is to help ABGC, and all genetic counselors, prepare for those changes thoughtfully and to uphold the CGC credential as a trusted standard that can adapt to the needs of patients, professionals, and broader communities.

Ma approaches genomic care as a complex and collaborative effort. Her role at Cedars-Sinai and in professional societies informs each other in a constant feedback loop: lessons from program development help her contribute to national and local organizations, while experiences from the broader field feed back into how she supports her work. She has contributed to the NSGC Position Statement on The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Genetic Counseling, advises the CardioGenomic Testing Alliance (CGTA) and helped found the Southern California Genetic Counselors (SCGC). Past leadership roles include co-chairing the Genomic Technologies SIG and the AI/ML Subcommittee and serving on NSGC’s Access and Service Delivery Committee.

Outside of work, Ma loves improv comedy, small theater productions and reading “good” sci-fi and mystery novels.

Catherine Smith, MS, LCGC (they/she/any), is excited to join the ABGC Board as a director and board liaison for the Certification Exam Committee (CEC). Smith is a gender-queer and disabled genetic counselor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and has spent her early career focused on mentorship, community education and advocacy for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. Their clinical specialties include research and cardiovascular genetic counseling.

As a more recent graduate, Smith hopes to bridge the gap between newer genetic counselors and ABGC Diplomates and to keep pushing ABGC to adapt to new opportunities in medicine so that board certification means being well-prepared for what it means to be a genetic counselor now and in the future.

Smith enjoys puzzles, board games and spending time with their cat.