I grew up in NJ to immigrant parents from Serbia. I graduated from Williams College, MA where I majored in Chemistry and English and swam on the varsity team. After graduation, I worked for two years as a clinical research coordinator in the neurology department at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. Presently, I am a rising second-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, NY. My current interests in the field of medicine span otolaryngology and radiation oncology.
I have been spending summers in Serbia ever since I was born and have grown to be proud of my Serbian heritage. In high school I became motivated to give back to the community that is so important to me, which is why I joined a humanitarian organization GM Optimist in Gornji Milanovac, my parents hometown. Through them, I helped on various ecological projects, and organized summer workshops with local high school students to promote understanding been the United States and Serbia, while discussing various topics such as college life and athletics.
Additionally, my uncle, an OB-GYN in Gornji Milanovac, exposed me to how medicine is practiced in Serbia, which is how I started to understand and appreciate differences between the Serbian and American health systems. Collectively, these experiences motivated me to join SAMA, an organization that shares my goals of contributing to the effort of expanding medical knowledge and technology to Serbia.