Fourth-year medical student Ivy Mwangi is moving away from Worcester and leaving New England for the first time since she and her family moved to Massachusetts from Nairobi, Kenya, two decades ago.
Mwangi, one of the 167 soon-to-be graduates of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School, will start her residency in internal medicine at University of California – San Francisco Medical Center soon after Commencement in June.
“Looking back on my time rotating through internal medicine at UMass Chan, I saw so much passion and dedication from the attendings and residents. What I really like about internal medicine is you have to consider all aspects of the patient’s health care, both clinical and social, even though they came into the hospital for a specific reason,” Mwangi said. “Because of that, I felt like it really integrated everything that we’d learned throughout our preclinical years and I found that really exciting.”
Mwangi moved to Worcester from Kenya with her parents and two sisters when she was 7. She was enrolled in the Worcester Public Schools, attending Clark Street Community School, Burncoat Middle School and Burncoat High School.
“Worcester was the perfect landing pad for me and my family. The city was so welcoming. It has such a large immigrant population. And coming from Kenya, it just felt like such a safe place to be and that’s something that I really have appreciated over time,” Mwangi said.
Mwangi was senior class president at Burncoat, graduated with high honors and was a member of the National Honor Society.
She attended Williams College in Williamstown, where she was pre-med and earned her undergraduate degree in biology.
“I loved growing up here. I think the thing that stood out most to me when I left Worcester to go to Williams is how lucky we are to live in such a diverse area. Taking my immediate friends’ group for example, the different cultures they come from and the different foods that I got to try growing up, it felt normal for us growing up. I got to college and realized it’s such a unique thing to have experienced,” Mwangi said. Those experiences shaped how she wants to practice medicine and enhanced her ability to communicate with people from diverse backgrounds regardless of where they are in life. “It really changes the way people are presenting to you as a patient. I think their histories are important to consider.”
While Mwangi was at Williams, her uncle was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive and fatal motor neuron disease. She said seeing the toll ALS takes on an individual and their families also influenced her decision to pursue a career in medicine.
“All my uncle wanted, regardless of his clinical progression, was to maintain the quality of life for his family. As long as that was there, that’s what made him feel particularly healthy,” Mwangi said. “As someone who was considering a career in medicine or health care, that really stuck with me and shined the light on the fact that there are so many other factors outside of clinical health that should be considered when looking at a patient and seeing what matters most to them and what makes them feel most healthy.”
Before coming to UMass Chan, Mwangi worked for two years as a cystic fibrosis clinical research assistant at Boston Children’s Hospital. She was accepted to UMass Chan in 2020 and immediately withdrew her applications to the other medical schools.
“It was such a unique opportunity to return to the same community that raised me. Knowing all the different and specific needs that Worcester and its population has and getting to address those needs and help serve them, was something I was looking forward to coming back to,” Mwangi said.
She and the rest of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine Class of 2024 will receive their degrees at the UMass Chan Commencement Ceremony on Sunday, June 2.
