Class of 2025

Alex Conway

Alex Conway grew up alongside chickens, bees, dogs, and cats in an old Maryland farmhouse. She graduated from Dartmouth in 2020 with a double major in Chinese and Biology, and spent much of those four years playing rugby, doing freshwater ecology research, and working for the Sexual Violence Prevention Project.

After undergrad, Alex did a year of orthopedic trauma research at UMass Medical Center, during which she also commissioned to the US Air Force. Her interests in global health originate in her Chinese language background and military status. Specifically, Alex hopes to improve the military’s approach to foreign aid and relief missions, with greater emphasis on cultural humility.

At Geisel, Alex volunteers as a patient care coordinator with Good Neighbor Health Clinic, enjoys cooking meals for Hixon House residents, participates in vaccination clinics, and is a director of the first year Outdoor Orientation program. She’s excited to be starting a vascular surgery research project in summer of 2022 investigating the pathophysiology of peripheral artery disease.

Ian Lichtenstein

Ian grew up in Portsmouth, NH and attended the University of New Hampshire for his undergraduate degree in Microbiology. During his undergrad education, Ian became interested in Global Health when traveled to the Ashanti region of Ghana to research the iatrogenic spread of Malaria in rural and urban hospitals. Yet, while he was there, he became fascinated by the clinicians’ and technicians’ ingenuity and resourcefulness when adapting medical procedures to the limited tools at hand in the rural clinics. Ian hopes to use the opportunities provided by GHS to build upon his past experiences and learn how to provide sustainable health interventions that are critical to providing ethical and inclusive care both abroad and in the US. In his free time, Ian enjoys getting outside in any capacity, listening to music/going to concerts, a good board game, or reading just about anything. 

Charles Maguire

Hailing from Denver, Colorado, Charlie was first exposed to medicine and global health while living in the Bolivian Amazon. It was there he found work at a non-profit outpatient clinic deep in the isolated jungle. As the primary source of care for thousands of Indigenous Bolivians, this clinic demonstrated to Charlie how medicine can be practiced beyond the sterile halls of a hospital. After his return from South America, Charlie went on to serve as a Firefighter/EMT while attending college at Denison University. During undergrad, he completed research in biochemistry and developmental economics, graduating in 2016 with dual degrees in Economics and Biology. After a stint as an investment banker, he returned to the fire service in Colorado for a few years. He then followed his now-wife to NYC where he earned his Master’s in Economics at the New School for Social Research, focusing on developmental economics, healthcare economics, and political economy.

Currently at Geisel, Charlie is a board member of the Honduran Tolupan Education Program (HTEP). HTEP’s goal is the development of educational opportunities for the Tolupan community in Honduras through sustainable investment and community engagement. Their most current project is the construction and curation of local town libraries as well as bi-annual wellness checks on school-going Tolupan children. Charlie’s global health interests revolve around health policy, healthcare infrastructure development, and sustainable economic development.

Paula Sofia Lara Mejia

Class of 2024

Ahmed El Hussein

Ahmed is a Lebanese-American first-year medical student that graduated from UCLA in 2019 with a degree in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology. During his undergraduate years, Ahmed tutored refugees in ESL and other subjects to help with their adjustment to life in the US. As a student also from an immigrant and refugee family, Ahmed’s interest in global health began during one of his visits back home, where he recognized the differences in health care access and quality between his home in the US and his home in the Middle East. Recognizing that the same issues persist in many countries, Ahmed’s passion lies in learning more about healthcare systems abroad and learning how we can make global health systems more equitable and sustainable.

Akash Halagur

Akash lived in Michigan before moving to Bangalore at age 10. His interests in global health developed from his experiences growing up in India, and were nurtured by his South Asian Studies major at Penn. He has conducted fieldwork research studies in rural India to better understand entrenched sociocultural inequities in oral cancer and emergency medical services. Prior to matriculating at Geisel, Akash worked as a healthcare consultant in NYC. He is very interested in using GHS opportunities to broaden his exposure and understanding of health equity to create change for the growing population of immigrants and diaspora in the US who have specific health concerns and barriers. In his free time, Akash enjoys listening to and producing music, electric skateboarding, yoga, and attempting to meditate.

Carly Ratekin

Carly Ratekin grew up exploring the mountains of Colorado and attended the University of Colorado for her undergraduate degree in Integrative Physiology. While an undergrad, she cultivated an interest in global health and researched social determinants of health in rural South Africa. Looking to put her years of academia to work, she accepted a position as a Community Health Promoter in Peace Corps Guyana. Throughout her two years in Guyana, she worked in a small health center expanding their systems for patient education, taught health classes at local schools, and partnered with local leaders to improve her community’s wellbeing. She cherished her time learning Guyanese customs and working with patients to reach their health goals. As a first year medical student and Global Health Scholar, she is excited to explore the diverse field of global health and learn how to be a better advocate for underserved communities.

Jessica Lee

Jess was born and raised in the small town of Old Lyme, Connecticut. Both of her parents immigrated from South Africa just before she was born and this became a pivotal part of her own personal and cultural identity as she grew up. Her family and personal experiences in the South African healthcare system sparked her interest in global health and more specifically women’s health, maternal health, adolescent health, and HIV in under-resourced global communities.

After graduating from Tufts University, she packed her bags and moved to Cape Town, South Africa to understand her family’s heritage and immerse herself in her own research questions revolving around HIV in high risk populations. She spent the year living in Cape Town completing her own research project investigating the efficacy of female empowerment on HIV prevention in adolescent girls, while also volunteering in adolescent HIV clinics and refugee clinics.  Jess is excited about integrating her own experiences into her medical career, while also learning from her peers and building upon her global health experiences through GHS.

Maria Malik

Maria was born in Pakistan and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated in 2019 from Princeton University, with a major in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a certificate in Global Health and Health Policy. Her interest in global health grew from being involved with Princeton’s Center for Health and Wellbeing and traveling to Vietnam and Kenya to study infectious disease epidemiology, teach health classes at local elementary schools, and work with a mobile clinic to provide healthcare to remote villages. During her senior year in college, she explored the intersection of health and climate change by going to Antananarivo, Madagascar to conduct a research project on the impact of tropical cyclones on Madagascar’s healthcare infrastructure and infectious disease burden. Maria finds zoonoses and the human-animal interface super fascinating – one of her favorite books is The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, which chronicles the emergence of viral hemorrhagic fevers, especially Ebola and Marburg. She is interested in learning more about global health equity, sustainability and conservation, environmental justice, and disease eradication.

Mo Kouassi-Brou

Mo was born in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire and spent much of her childhood traveling to several places in Africa. Her interest in global health began when she volunteered at a small health clinic in Djibouti and this passion grew as she was exposed to a variety of health systems in her travels abroad and in the U.S. Mo graduated from Princeton University in 2017 with a major in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and certificate in Global Health and Health Policy. She maintains a global view of healthcare and is excited to integrate global health in her medical education at Geisel in order to learn more about her global health interests: minority women’s health, health disparities, and strengthening health systems.

Oluchi Okonkwo

Oluchi is a Nigerian-American first-year medical student who grew up in Nigeria, Houston, New York City, and, most recently, Hartford, Connecticut where she taught high school chemistry for two years. She has a B.A. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and is pursuing a Master of Education degree at Johns Hopkins University. Through her background in teaching, Oluchi has learned that it is difficult to truly empathize with or advocate for patients without understanding the substantial gaps existing within the healthcare, education, socioeconomic, and political systems that affect patients. As a Global Health Scholar, Oluchi hopes to learn about these disparities, gain clinical skills necessary to serve in under resourced areas, and educate and empower our community to take action to address these disparities.

In the future, Oluchi hopes to combine her interest in women’s health, her love for education, and her passion for working to build up global underserved communities. She sees herself as a practicing OBGYN physician in a low-income community in the United States, as a professor of medicine focused on training the next generation of medical students and residents, and as a researcher conducting global public health research while leading projects in different African countries that would aim to improve the healthcare systems in those communities.

Sirey Zhang

Originally from Colorado, Sirey studied anthropology at Dartmouth as an undergrad. His academic interests focused on 1) how structural violence that crosscuts along combinations of factors such as race, gender, and class ultimately manifest in health inequities, and 2) how histories of medical discrimination and the esoteric nature of the biomedical field have made it so that hospitals and clinics feel more welcome to certain groups of people compared to others. He conducted fieldwork in Cameroon, at Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, and most recently, a 6-month project in Tanzania where he conducted an ethnography to understand contemporary healthcare within the context of colonialism and neoliberalism.

Stephanie Kim

Class of 2023

Boyoung Ahn

Bo was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. Growing up, Bo enjoyed learning languages, including English and traditional Chinese characters, and performing Korean martial arts known as Taekwondo alongside her brother.

Brendan Barth

Brendan Barth was born in Hanover, NH and attended Dartmouth, and so it appears he’ll never be leaving. Nonetheless, his interest in global health began while volunteering at a health clinic in a small town in New Zealand. He was fortunate to explore other opportunities during his two gap years before returning to Geisel, which included living in Rwanda for four months; he performed research, shadowed, and helped plan and organize “endoscopy week” within the internal medicine department at CHUK in Kigali, an experience he’ll never forget. He’d like to learn more about how to create more sustainable, equitable, and mutually beneficial relationships through global health work, as well as how healthcare systems work abroad and what we can learn from them.

Amal Cheema

Amal Cheema is a Pakistani-American medical student and 2017 graduate from Wellesley College, with majors in biochemistry and political science. At Wellesley, her  interest in global health grew through her work as a fellow at the Albright Institute for Global Affairs and as a volunteer health financing analyst for the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Kigali, Rwanda. Prior to matriculating at Geisel, Amal studied the intersection of religio-cultural beliefs and organ donation in Southeast Asia and Europe as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, and pursued empirical biomedical ethics research at Mayo Clinic. She is excited about pursuing some of her passions — global health ethics, health equity, and sustainability — through continued learning and engagement afforded by the Global Health Scholars program.

Bob Chung

My name is Bob Chung. I was born and raised in northwest Ohio, and I am currently a second-year medical student at Geisel. I am interested in global health and particularly, understanding the complex roles people and organizations play in delivering healthcare to all people. My experiences in the US and during an exchange program in Taiwan have shown me that there is a lot of learning and work to do, but I am optimistic about the future based on my interactions with experts in the field, and the drive and motivation of my classmates. After graduating, I will be serving my obligation to the Navy. I am looking forward to opportunities to work with the diverse group of service members as well as use the global health education and experiences I gain through GHS to be a helpful collaborator in the Navy’s global health engagement missions.

Prianca Tawde

My name is Prianca Tawde and I am a second-year medical student at Geisel School of Medicine. My interest in serving a global population as a physician began with an early exposure to the Indian healthcare system and how it deals with patients living with long-term physical disabilities. Throughout my upbringing, I spent my summers working with adults and children struggling to overcome the health and education disparity in my family’s hometown of Mumbai, India. After graduating, I joined Bain & Co. and served as the head of the Global Development Initiative in the Boston office. In this role, I learned the importance of social enterprises and sustainable economic development for rural Indian and Pakistan communities. I continue to look forward to the opportunities I get to learn and engage in global health equity as a Global Health Scholar.

Marilyn Ndukwe

Marilyn was born and raised in Aba, Nigeria. She attended Xavier University of Louisiana for her undergraduate studies where she majored in Chemistry. Growing up in a medically disadvantaged area, she noticed the lack of medical professionals presented a major challenge in combating disease as did lack of access to medication. Her time at Gilead exposed her to the work that can be done to provide care and access to drugs for those in need, especially patients in developing countries. As a future physician, Marilyn is excited to engage and learn from others through the program ways that global health equity can be achieved. Outside of school, Marilyn likes to spend time outdoors mostly running, although, she also enjoys hiking and exploring national parks occasionally. She enjoys watching the show Friends and has probably seen each episode about ten times.

Class of 2022

Michael Hoggard

• • Michael Hoggard was born in California, raised predominantly in Utah, and has lived on an off in Finland. For his bachelor’s degree, Michael studied economics, during which time he had the opportunity to study abroad in Chile with an emphasis on Chilean poetry and in Thailand with an emphasis on global health. After he graduated in 2016, Michael pursued his MPH in Finland, where his daughter was born.
  • Michael is interested in refugee/ immigrant health and has had the opportunity to engage with different aspects of it in Utah, Thailand, and Finland. During his undergraduate degree, Michael had the privilege to volunteer with the local refugee population four days a week in five different capacities and to receive a grant to research barriers to health care access for refugees. Michael hopes to someday utilize his academic backgrounds in economics, public health, and clinical medicine to design and implement health systems in refugee camps.

Leny Madiline Goncalves Dias

• • I was born and raised in Cabo Verde, a small country off the West coast of Africa. From a young age, I started helping my parents care for patients in the hospital. Witnessing a precarious health care system, I knew I had to be an agent of change and help tackle the many ailments and healthcare challenges affecting poor regions and communities like the one in which I grew up. I graduated from Brandeis University in 2016, and worked in genetics research before attending Geisel. I am eager to be fully engaged as a global health scholar and to take part in this mission of promoting wellness, and by improving wellness, providing the hope of better lives around the world.

Emily Stitt

• • I grew up in Jericho, Vermont and graduated from Middlebury College in 2014 with a degree in biology. I was a cross-country ski racer there and am still an avid outdoorswoman. I would love to be an expedition doctor and work with the local populations on trips to develop sustainable health systems.  I also spent the last 3 years living in Oslo, Norway, where I spent part of my time as a med student and research assistant there. My time there made me more interested in global health in considering their socialized system.

MIA BERTALAN 

• • After growing up in rural Wyoming and Alabama, I moved to Boston to study Organismic Evolutionary Biology and Global Health and Health Policy at Harvard, drawn to work started there by Paul Farmer and Partners in Health. During undergrad, I volunteered with Health Leads at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), connecting patients with community resources to address socioeconomic determinants of health. These experiences sparked my interest in medicine. Following graduation, I coordinated neuro-oncology clinical research at MGH, including brain donations, and worked closely with the Brastianos Lab, a translational research group that seeks to elucidate the genetic drivers of cancer metastasis to the central nervous system. This focused my interest in medicine on to oncology. As an aspiring surgical oncology physician-scientist, I hope to help address disparities in cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, both within the US and internationally. I am excited to be a Global Health Scholar, as this program has helped me think more critically about my future role in global surgery and how I can facilitate partnerships in education and research among surgical oncologists around the globe.

Renisa Ramnath

• • Hometown: Sangre Grande, Trinidad and Tobago
  • Global Health Interests: I first became interested in global health as an undergrad at Rice University, in Houston TX. I traveled annually with Rice’s chapter of Global Brigades on short medical service trips to Honduras and Nicaragua. After taking more classes in global health related topics, I became interested in more long term work and spent two summers in Uganda working on menstrual hygiene education programs for primary school aged girls. I would like my work in global health to continue to have a focus on issues of women’s health in the future.

Ramzi Ben-Yelles

• • Ramzi Ben-Yelles was born in New York City, but spent the first half of his childhood in the North African nation of Algeria. Upon moving back to the U.S., Ramzi’s family settled down in Southern California. He subsequently completed his undergraduate education at UCLA, majoring in Global Studies and minored in Global Health.
  • Outside of medicine, Ramzi comes from a loud, loving Mediterranean family. He enjoys running, trying new food, and spending time with his loved ones

Maggie Leech

• • Maggie Leech is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2017. She first became interested in global health through her coursework but was able to apply this knowledge to real-world experiences working for the global health team at Ashoka Innovators for the Public, an incubator for social entrepreneurs in Washington, DC. During her senior year, she focused on American health care while working at The Dartmouth Institute for Dr. Carrie Colla to identify low- and no-value care practices. After graduation, Maggie took a gap year to work for silverstay, a dementia care startup out of Johns Hopkins University and to spend a brief internship at The Lancet headquarters in London. At Geisel, her interests are focused on women’s health disparities around the globe, and she is specially interested in last-mile strategies to deliver care.

Kate Miller

• • Kate Miller is from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She attended Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she graduated with a degree in Microbiology and Immunology. During her undergraduate degree, she was able to travel to Haiti and volunteer with an organization called the New World Community. There, she was able to shadow a medical volunteer that was providing care to individuals in the community with tuberculous and HIV. This experience motivated her to learn more about the role that she can play in improving the health of individuals around the world.
  • Kate went on to complete a Master of Science in Global Health from mcmaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Through this degree, she was able to gain research experience in both India and Australia. She is excited to be part of the Global Health Scholars program to work with others and develop the skills needed for a career in global health.