As a freshman entering Biomedical Engineering, I was pretty adamant that research was something I would never pursue. It just did not appeal to me. Eventually though, I was encouraged by mentors and peers to get involved at least for the sake of my resume. Now, only four short years later, my career aspirations revolve around research. My experiences at USC have given me the desire to pursue a Master’s Degree in Public Health in addition to an MD so I can advocate for the health of entire populations and not just individuals. I can only thank USC for allowing me to discover this unknown passion of mine, which ultimately led to me pursuing Graduation with Leadership Distinction in Research.

My education here has truly been multi-disciplinary. Both my within and beyond the classroom experiences were critical in bringing me to where I am today. Four years of Spanish classes have made me a functional speaker and knowledgeable of different cultures around the world. I spent the summer of 2013 in Spain studying healthcare systems and global health. The biggest time commitment of my sophomore and junior years was working with a team of USC engineers attempting to regrow bone in the lab. Most recently, I conducted an original study in the Dominican Republic trying to understand the causality of the nation’s high incidence of maternal mortality. Alone these experiences taught me small lessons, but together they culminate into three key insights that define my educational experience. These insights are: access to care is not enough; cultural understanding is important in medicine; prevention should be the future of healthcare. On this site I explore those insights and what specific experiences led to their development. In the leadership section I discuss how the lessons I learned as an undergraduate gave me a desire to work with underserved populations and how I will overcome the obstacles preventing me from achieving this goal.