2024-2025 Scholars
MPH
Rachel Aylor
On a recent afternoon in the Baltimore neighborhood of Fells Point, Rachel Aylor chatted with her friend, a street vendor, who told her that he had recently paid thousands to smuggle his son into the U.S. from El Salvador. But soon the child became sick, prompting an expensive visit to a hospital emergency department and placing the family under enormous financial stress. “The father said, ‘Rachel, please help me. What can we do?’”
MPH
Niroj Bhandari
When Niroj Bhandari graduated from high school in Nepal, his academic achievement gained him entry as a top 20 applicant out of thousands at Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences. He soon became involved in student groups and faculty research.
MPH
Roshit Bothara
While in medical school in New Zealand, where he has lived since he was 12, Roshit Bothara visited the Nepal region where he was born. There, he volunteered at his birth hospital and helped provide checkups for children at a government school.
MPH/mba
Ama Essuman
Growing up in Accra, Ghana, Ama Essuman puzzled over why her parents—accomplished physician-researchers with prestigious degrees—chose to run a small clinic in an underserved community instead of holding more lucrative positions. The answer became clear as she matured: True fulfillment meant living for something greater than personal gain.
MPH
Logan Fenhouse
At the University of Alabama, Logan Fenhouse was very involved with Beyond Bama, an organization that introduces students to community partnership through short-term service-learning trips. Her first trip was to Baton Rouge in 2016 to provide disaster relief for flood victims. While throwing away residents’ items beyond salvage, she spotted a DVD labeled “Liam’s first birthday.”
MPH/LLM
Angélica Gutiérrez-Ramos
Growing up in Colombia, Angélica Gutiérrez-Ramos excelled in school and discovered she had a gift for leadership and public speaking. When the time came to choose a career, she decided to become an attorney.
MPH
Ruxandra Irimia
Early in Ruxandra Irimia’s hematology residency, she prescribed one of her elderly patients drugs to treat his blood cancer. Since the patient was illiterate, she couldn’t simply hand him a schedule for taking the medicines. She then realized that overcoming the effects of inadequate education and poverty required her to become creative.
MPH
Cordelia Kwon
Cordelia Kwon knew early in life that she wanted to pursue a career in public health, influenced heavily by experiences with her mother, a pediatric neurologist, and her father, a bioethics professor. But where she would focus her career was less clear.
MPH
Asma Altaf Hussain Merchant
While volunteering as a medical student at screening camps for early detection of congenital heart diseases, Asma Merchant recognized the vulnerability and neglect faced by low-income pediatric patients in Pakistan.
MPH
Zoe Mungai-Barris
As the daughter of an American father and Kenyan mother, Zoe Mungai-Barris grew up in the U.S, experiencing tension from her origins in two countries with very different resources. Drawn to travel and eager to be with family in Kenya, Mungai-Barris took a gap year after high school to teach English in rural Paraguay and Kenya.
MPH
Mustafa Haj Omar
As Mustafa Haj Omar neared graduation from medical school at Damascus University, the Syrian revolution started. Peaceful demonstrations quickly escalated into government-led violence against protestors.
MPH
Mauricio Torres-Martinez
Mauricio Torres-Martinez spent his pasantía—a year of mandatory social service following graduation from medical school in Mexico—in Ciénega de González, a rural, mountain community in the state of Nuevo León. Alone in the clinic, Torres-Martinez performed all duties himself: patient care, ordering supplies, education and outreach, and even clinic upkeep.
MPH
Najoie Zahr
When Najoie Zahr graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, she and three classmates from the university’s School of Public Health were offered a dream job working together to set up a new public health department in Dearborn, Michigan, the city where Zahr grew up. There was just one catch: The budget was non-existent.
MPH
Haseena Zaidi
As a queer, trans, and Shi’a Muslim growing up in Pakistan, Haseena Zaidi felt surrounded by hatred and violence. But they found refuge in a theater group at school.