For one alumna, a new chapter unfolded at the foot of a waterfall.
The year was 1999, just after fall break. The trees still glowed with brilliant hues of ocher. She had just returned to Ithaca with a new friend and fellow Cornell student, and he suggested they end their long trip with a hike at Taughannock Falls.
“That was our first date,” she shares. “With a young, nervous but excited kind of energy, we stood at the bottom of the waterfall and had our first kiss.” He proposed to her in that very spot five years later, and the couple has returned to Taughannock to capture photos of their growing family over the years.
The falls have become a living reflection of her life. As a first-generation American and college student, she’s faced considerable challenges. But her story reveals how personal transformation is uplifted by community, resilience, and access to education, creating ripples that reach out far and wide to touch the lives of countless others.
Downstream forces
Uncertainty shaped her childhood and adolescence. Her mother, the lone provider and caretaker of her family, was very ill, adding to her family’s financial hardships.
“We were very poor growing up,” she says. “But despite not having money or housing security, my mom always made sure we were well-dressed and well-presented for school. She knew education was the path to a good life in America.”
This value surfaced time and again from many different voices in her community. It was especially emphasized during the summers and evenings she spent at the hospital while her mother received dialysis treatments.
“I literally grew up in a dialysis unit,” she explains. “The nurses, techs, and the doctors just constantly told me how important education was and how helpful I was because I was my mom’s translator.”
This relationship with her mother’s care team is just one example of the many ways a community rallied around her and her family. She emphasizes that this support—from her mother’s practitioners, members of her church, and her many teachers and guidance counselors—lifted her to success.
Flowing into a new chapter
By the time she was in high school, she knew she didn’t want to commute to a local college like her older siblings, but her mom was initially resistant to the idea.
“She was Italian and old school,” she laughs. “She said there were good colleges nearby and that there was no reason for me to go away. But then my guidance counselor said to me, ‘Well, you’re just going to have to get into a school that’s so good that she’s not going to be able to tell you can’t go.’”
She says guidance counselors and other educators in her life went above and beyond. She describes how they drove her to visit schools, knowing her mother was bedbound, and how her superintendent even took her all the way to Ithaca so she could experience Cornell for herself.
“God put these amazing people in my life to open doors for me,” she says. “And when I got into Cornell, it was my older brother and sister who told my mom, ‘You have to let her go—she has to do this.’ They did so much for me. Their sacrifices made this path possible, and I’ll always be deeply grateful.”
In addition to being accepted, she was also named what is now called a Meinig Family Cornell National Scholar. She says her financial aid package made it possible for her to attend.
“It was one thing convincing my mom to let me go, but it was another thing entirely to be able to afford it,” she says. “I remember going to Willard Straight every semester to deposit my check. I just couldn’t believe Cornell was giving me money to go to school. It’s still beyond belief.”
She admits her time at Cornell was filled with many highs and lows. It was a period of intense self-discovery and exploration into who she wanted to become. She shares that she felt different from many people on campus and that there were plenty of moments where she was consumed in self-doubt. “I was intimidated by how it felt like everyone else around me had more and knew more—how they seemed more supported or deserved to be at Cornell more than I did.”
Mentors and community built her resilience to this doubt over time, and her small cohort of fellow Cornell National Scholars helped build her confidence as she found her home at Cornell Human Ecology. Then, she found Elliot.
“Meeting my eventual husband my junior year was transformative. We just knew being at Cornell together was the time of our lives—we loved every bit of it together.”
Creating ripples
After graduation, she pursued a career in medicine. Her residency at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan made her realize how special her mother’s care had been.
“Our situation was not like the rest of the world,” she explains. “People were connecting with us and trying to understand my mom’s culture. They understood she had health literacy issues and really met her where she was. But in my training, I learned that there were people who could navigate the system and had resources, and then there was everyone else, and that usually everyone else had terrible health outcomes.”
This awareness, paired with a humanist perspective and the knowledge she built as a Human Biology, Health, and Society major, made her think more critically about inequities and social determinants of health. This proved critical when she was made the architect of a new curriculum at a new medical school that opened in the mid-2010s and became fully independent by the end of the decade.
She says the curriculum she helped design and continues to lead aligns with the core teachings she experienced at Cornell Human Ecology, and that’s not by accident. She is also acutely aware that this work touches lives far beyond the students who learn from it.
“We say this all the time at our school: Think not only about all the medical students we teach. Think about how they’ll become doctors who train residents and medical students. Think about all of those people they are going to care for—hundreds and thousands of patients.”
The curriculum makes the community the classroom, allowing students to access individuals and families from underserved areas. “I feel very fortunate to be a vehicle to help drive this impact,” she adds.
She and her husband are also making a lasting difference in the lives of undergraduate students at Cornell. In 2024, they established an endowed scholarship in honor of her mother that will provide financial assistance to Cornell Human Ecology students.
“Since my mom passed away, my work as a physician holds deeper meaning,” she says. “It feels like a way to carry forward her legacy—the strength she showed, the sacrifices she made, and her deep belief in the power of education. It’s pretty incredible when you think about everything my family has been through to make this gift possible.”
“Cornell was transformative for the both of us and our lives,” adds her husband. The couple shares that Cornell not only made their family what it is today but that their education opened doors to the success they’ve experienced in their professional lives.
“I don’t think there is any dollar amount that can repay what Cornell has done for my life or the trajectory of my family,” she says.
