Could you tell us a little bit about your early educational background?

Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Cal Poly SLO in 2016.

What first got you interested in the healthcare field as a career choice? There are a lot of career options in the field – nursing, physician assistant, etc., what made you decide that pharmacy was the right practice area/career choice for you?

Pharmacists have played an active and influential part in my life since early childhood. I was diagnosed with a common skin condition known as eczema. Being a regular patient, I admired the potency of both naturally derived and synthetically created chemicals to treat and cure ailments. The pharmacists especially awed me: they were helpful, compassionate, and insightful, using their wisdom to aid those in search of a medicinal cure. In a sense, they were my heroes. Ever since then, I wanted to help those in need; to be someone they trust and ask for advice; to explain how a drug can heal them, just as pharmacists have done for me.

What type of obstacles have you had to overcome on the road to getting your education and in particular in pursuing your PharmD degree? Was there any one thing that led you to decide, “this is definitely the right move for me”?

Near the end of my freshman year in college, great stress befell my family. My grandmother, who had raised me during my childhood when my parents could not, suffered a stroke in Los Angeles, six hours from my home. Knowing that my parents didn’t want to close down their donut shop that had been open 24/7 for the last twenty years, I took it upon myself to help take care of the business while they cared for my grandmother in LA. Every weekend for the next year, I made a six hour drive home to manage the shop.

Once you decided to pursue a PharmD degree, how did you know that KGI SPHS was the right school for you?

KGI School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences is passionate, diverse, and resourceful—a place I would feel right at home. It is a forerunner in the pharmacy field for innovative and personally-optimized patient care. KGI is remarkable because it was one of the first school in the nation to strongly seek to use technology and biotechnology to personalize patient care. This pharmacy program has played a substantial role in bringing better healthcare to the entire nation by setting a prime example of what a pharmacy program should entail.

What are you most looking forward to about beginning your PharmD studies at KGI?

I am most looking forward to being part of a school that stresses professionalism and networking.

What setting do you see yourself working in eventually -in industry, community pharmacy, clinical, government agency, etc.? Why does that area of practice appeal to you?

When I was young, my parents would brew a pungent soup to cure my ailments by boiling down dried herbs into a concentrated broth. Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by how oriental medicine works—a holistic, safe, and natural treatment focusing on supplementing the body’s natural deficiencies. With this interest in mind, I took Kinesiology and Asian American studies classes to gain a comprehensive understanding of the field. From this, I formulated a dream—to own a pharmacy that hybridizes the ideas of both oriental and western medicine.