About
Gabriela Gonzalez, a daughter of Mexican immigrant parents born and raised in South Los Angeles graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a bachelor of science in Molecular, Cell and Development Biology. She discovered her interest in medicine while volunteering at the LAC/USC Medical Center as a high school junior in the USC Med-COR program. This early exposure helped her realize the haves and have-nots of her urban desert community. As an undergraduate, she developed key leadership skills as a long term board member for Chicanos/Latinos for Community Medicine. She collaborated on many initiatives to improve the URM medical student pipeline for UCLA undergraduates and on community projects ranging from health fairs to high school health programming under the advising of Dr. David E. Hayes-Bautista. Her clinical experiences before medical school at the Venice Family Clinic and as a participant of the UCLA Summer Urban Health Fellowship helped her begin to think about creating healthier communities by focusing on the social determinants of health. Her experience in the fellowship was a pivotal introduction to community-based participatory research to assess the health and healthcare access of the Day Laborer population. As a second-year medical student in the UCLA DGSOM Prime program, she still remains involved with mentorship outside of UCLA as a legacy board member with MiMentor. Growing up in a community where youth and especially women of color rarely attend college, yet alone pursue professional training has kept her grounded to continue mentoring. She hopes to pursue a surgical subspecialty and help redesign our health systems delivery approach for underserved communities.
Undergrad Institution: UC Los Angeles
Hometown: South Los Angeles, CA