I’ve always been one of those people who likes to lay out a plan. Upon starting at Harvard in fall 2006, I fancied myself a history concentrator and took off after that pursuit. It was engaging for a while until I developed two aspirations: to deepen the scholarly perspective of my historical studies and to find a community that actively fostered feminist philosophies. Enter WGS. Studying feminist scholarship in my varied WGS courses, I found that I was able to complicate and enrich my love of history. This new layer of critical analysis gave me a valuable perspective in the wide range of English, history, government, literature, and even life science classes I took. For me, WGS was a community that was not just supportive and motivating but also thought-provoking and uniquely focused on the questions that engaged me.

Once I finished studying archival historical material and writing about American gender history as an undergrad, I planned to work in health policy in Washington DC and apply to medical school. I did both of those things and then ended up interning at the White House, for the National Economic Council. Without the benefit of Economics 10, I got a crash course in economic policy, and I had the chance to bring my own expertise to the table, contributing to economic policy for women and families.

Following my internship, I worked as a presidential speechwriter for President Barack Obama for several years, which remains one of the great privileges of my life. I wrote speeches covering everything from family leave policy to universal kindergarten to protecting health insurance.

Finally, I circled back to medical school, which had been the plan all along. After graduating from Brown University's Alpert Medical School in 2018, I started residency in Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. I often got asked on the interview trail to explain myself: the WGS concentrator, speechwriter, doctor combo doesn't make a lot of sense to most people. For me, it has always been about the philosophical foundation I built as a WGS concentrator: pursuing complicated questions, understanding people's stories, and being an active player in changing the world around me.