Her Story
About Kori
I've been in healthcare for about 6 years now, and I'm currently in my first year as a master's student at Columbia University, which has always been my dream school. I'm pursuing my thesis on the cognitive outcomes associated with different dietary frameworks at the Institute of Human Nutrition, working directly with my mentors Dr. Sloan and Dr. Loriola Vincenzo in the behavioral medicine department at New York Presbyterian Hospital. My work involves a lot of data analysis using Python, and I'm taking courses in pathophysiology, the etiology of obesity, and thesis development. Before Columbia, I completed my undergraduate degree at McGill University in Pharmacology, where I graduated as one of the top of my cohort in my faculty. During those 5 years at McGill, I worked on multiple research projects, including research on GPCRs and their implications on cardiovascular and neurological pharmacotherapy in a pharmacology laboratory, and I was part of a research project in the oncology clinic at the McGill University Health Center where I worked directly with patients investigating the gut microbiome and its implications on cancer. I'm very passionate about global healthcare and public health policy, so I did all of my medical internships abroad, spending 2 months in Portugal and 2 months in Greece. Having a well-rounded experience and seeing all of these different healthcare settings firsthand, including the socioeconomic differences and different healthcare systems like Canada's public system versus the United States system, has completely shaped my perspective and the direction I want my medical career to go into. I fundamentally believe that nutrition and preventative medicine is the direction of the future, and that's why I'm pursuing the research I'm doing now. I think the healthcare system focuses on the treatment of already existing diseases as opposed to preventing them, and we're never going to be able to fix the problem unless we start at the root.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Kori
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Honestly, two things. First of all, hard work, and you'll get out of life what you put into it, I believe. But with that being said, I think that everyone chooses, or it's very easy to follow a certain linear path, especially when it comes to wanting to pursue a career in medicine. You're expected to follow a certain trajectory in terms of a timeline, right? Go to undergrad, go to medical school, write the MCAT at a certain point in time, do things as you're told, and I think that I've pretty much done the opposite of that. I've taken more time here and there, and pursued different research opportunities, and gotten some absolutely incredible experiences as a result of following what I'm passionate about within my field. So I think that if I were to give advice, it is to not do what everybody else is doing, and listen to yourself, and follow what you think will be fulfilling to you, because that's what's going to make you stand out in whatever field you're in.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
There are major challenges for sure in the healthcare system. The healthcare system right now is overburdened, it's a global problem, and we are working to mitigate a system that is not in our favor. The disease burden and chronic disease epidemics are running rampant. I think that because the healthcare system itself focuses on the treatment of already existing diseases, as opposed to preventing them, we're never going to be able to fix the problem unless we start at the root. The number one problem, I would say, is just general lifestyle health, especially in the United States, like nutrition. Those things need to be changed from adolescence onward in order to actually see changes in the system itself.
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