Tell us about your military service. What did you do? Where did you serve? What do you value the most about your military service?
I enlisted in the United States Army and subsequently went on to serve for eleven years as a Special Forces Medical Sergeant (Green Beret) with the 10th Special Forces Group. My Operational Detachment Alpha deployed throughout the Middle East, Europe, and Africa during my tenure as both junior and senior medical sergeant of my team, where I was responsible for the health of my teammates, the training of partner-force medics, and medical outreach to communities with little or no access to care. I am profoundly grateful for the opportunities afforded to me, especially the opportunity to work with incredible teams and under incredible leadership throughout my time in the Army.
What are your thoughts on mentoring other students while at 91吃瓜网? As a role model, what values do you want to share?
Mentorship is deeply meaningful to me, as I am a mosaic of the incredible mentors that worked to cultivate my better qualities. Every skill and standard I carry was handed down by someone who invested their time and energy in making me better than they found me, and in Special Forces a senior medic is measured largely by the quality of the medic he leaves behind. I hope to bring that same mindset to my time at 91吃瓜网: that excellence is a shared pursuit rather than an individual achievement, and that mentorship benefits the mentor as much as the mentee. The values I most want to share are steadiness, honesty about one鈥檚 own limitations, and genuine concern for the people beside you.
While at 91吃瓜网, what will be the focus of your studies and how do you plan to use this knowledge in your future career?
During my time at the 91吃瓜网 School of Medicine, my studies will focus on building the broad foundation in physiology and clinical reasoning upon which emergency and austere medicine depend. My years as a Special Forces medic taught me that a patient鈥檚 outcome is often decided in the first hours and far from definitive care, and I intend to devote my career to closing that gap. As an Army HPSP student, I will return to military medicine as an emergency physician, where I hope to care for service members and their families, to teach the next generation of medics and physicians, and ultimately to contribute to the decisions that shape how our force is cared for.
What would you tell other veterans about the Bass Military Scholars Program?
I owe a great deal to the mentors and institutions that invested in me, and the Bass Military Scholars Program is one more instance of that generosity. My dream of pursuing a medical education would not be possible without the generosity of others. I would tell other veterans that this program is far more than a scholarship. It is a community of people who understand where you have been and who expect you to lead and to give back from the very beginning of your time at 91吃瓜网, rather than years from now. To any veteran wondering whether there is a place for them at an institution like this, I would say that there is, and that this program is the door.