Helplessly, I watched as my grandmother deteriorated from Alzheimer's disease, a woman who moved away from a Native reservation to become a professor. She had spent her life acquiring knowledge in a field that had actively inhibited our community from joining, only for her knowledge to be taken from her; at that moment, helplessness felt like heritage. I tried supporting her by staying positive, but ignorance changed nothing. After her passing and considerable reflection, I realized that the impact I wish to make in my community requires a modified form of endurance: A dedication to alleviating the issue. In the following months, I volunteered in hospice, spoke with hundreds of elders in similar situations as my grandmother, and worked with the families affected by the loss of their loved ones, but an aching feeling of impotence remained. As a Lakota student leader in Carleton’s Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance, I’ve spent hours listening to elders describe where Western care breaks down when language and tradition are treated as peripheral. Their stories mirror those in my own family: loved ones who delayed treatment because of cost, fear, or a learned sense that the system wasn’t built for them. Those patterns aren’t solved by better pamphlets. They change when healthcare shows up consistently and humbly, with cultural knowledge as a foundation rather than an afterthought. In response, I brought my passion for equity into both the clinic and the lab. Clinically, I’ve worked as an EMT in a rural community and spent four years of weekends in the ER, often speaking with frightened families, some of whom don’t speak English comfortably, trying to translate both information and reassurance. In those moments, trust isn’t a slogan; it determines whether someone accepts care, follows through, and returns before a problem becomes irreversible. Being able to slow the room down, explain without condescension, and protect dignity has felt like a small but real way to begin rebuilding what has been broken. In research, I’ve pursued the diseases that weigh heavily on Indigenous families, Alzheimer’s disease and substance use disorders. In the Neiworth Primate Cognition Lab, I studied Alzheimer’s pathology in tamarins and developed an independent project examining network-level dysfunction (DMN/TPN) as a potential early marker of decline. At the Mayo Clinic, I worked in addiction neuroscience and neuromodulation, including deep-brain stimulation approaches for alcohol use disorder. Presenting my findings at AISES as research's impact lies in moving digestible knowledge back to the communities most affected. Living with Native communities in the Arctic reinforced that culture is ingrained in medicine, and that these challenges aren’t geographically bound. The details change, but the pattern repeats: distance from services, cultural mismatch, and the fatigue of being studied rather than partnered with. I’ve realized my scope must widen, not away from my community, but in service of it. That is why, as I begin medical school at UCLA, I plan to immerse myself in the Global Health Equity Pathway and build long-term partnerships with local tribal communities in Southern California. My goal is not to “help” from a distance, but to learn how to co-create care that communities trust and use, dementia support that honors caregivers, mental health services that feel safe, and addiction interventions built around community strengths. I want to become the kind of physician who can move between clinic, community, and research, closing the loop that was missing when I watched my grandmother fade: turning helplessness into understanding, and understanding into care that holds.

“Can we get some help in here?” The voice was urgent, slicing through the hum of the ER. I moved quickly and calmly, past the sterile lights, the antiseptic air, and into the room. Looking at the cause of this urgency, I noticed a young male. His arm twisted in angles that arms shouldn’t know. His eyelids fluttered, heavy under propofol, yet forcing themselves open. When he looked at me, I saw it: a hollow, desperate gaze. A surrender, a look that was not unfamiliar. Over the following days, I kept thinking back to his look of hopelessness. I had seen it frequently while volunteering within emergency medicine. Often, no drug can be administered to anchor someone when everything else is slipping beyond their control. It is in these situations, where no immediate clinical measure exists, that treatment of the patient, over the illness, begins. This realization led to the understanding that one of the most critical interventions is building rapport. Working as a volunteer EMT, I am often the first provider to make patient contact and am one of the last people they see, stopping in after their discharge from the ER. Through building this connection, patients would often ask me questions that extended beyond what the treatment entailed. Questions about whether or not they would be able to pick their child again after an ulcer, issues that are as impactful to life experience as physical pain. I am frequently the translator of dense medical language, a patient advocate, and a navigator of emotions after a difficult diagnosis. Through my efforts to personalize the revolving door of the emergency room, I realized the profound impact of grief. Wanting to care for those affected beyond the patient led me to hospice care. During my time volunteering in hospice, I provided companionship to elders with memory loss in desolate care centers. Other times, I said nothing at all, allowing the silence to settle between us. It was a stark contrast to my time in emergency medicine. The work was not about fixing, but about navigating hopelessness with honesty and compassion. To comfort someone isn’t to tell them their pain can be avoided; it’s to recognize why it hurts in the first place, and to sit with them in that understanding. That, too, is medicine. Hospice taught me how to be present in the silence, and bereavement work taught me how to gently draw out what that silence held. I still think about that boy in the ER, the one who looked up at me with a gaze stripped bare of hope. His look was shared with the hospice patients I supported, the families I helped through the grieving process, and my own family. I have been in a position to provide the medical treatment to help the physical, and I have been there to address the cause of that hopelessness. Throughout my time in medicine, I have encountered numerous issues that appear beyond hope. What makes a good physician, however, is being able to provide the emotional support and use their interest to provide for the patient to change the term of what is inevitable. To further the next question in the lab and meet the next human need at the bedside is why I want to pursue medicine. Medicine begins there. So does my commitment to it.