What are our HOPES alumni up to now?
Aimee Zhang – Project Leader & Student Researcher; B.A. in Psychology
Since graduation, I have continued doing research in clinical psychology. For a year, I was working at a mental health startup in San Francisco. I am currently enrolled in a clinical psychology doctoral program, the PGSP-Stanford PsyD Consortium, so I’m not too far away. I’m training to be a child/adolescent psychologist. In my free time, I enjoy volunteering in East Palo Alto and spending time with family and friends.
Aliyya Haque – Student Researcher; B.A. in Human Biology
I received a MPH from Tulane University’s School of Public Health and then went to law school at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. I’m currently an associate at Alston & Bird LLP in Atlanta, GA. I’m also on the Board of Directors for Georgians for a Healthy Future, a consumer based nonprofit advocacy group whose overall mission is to improve health care outcomes for all Georgians.
Christina Chen – Project Leader & Student Researcher; B.A. in Human Biology
After HOPES, I did a research year in MR imaging of the musculoskeletal system, while applying to medical school. I went to Stanford for medical school and Radiology residency. I just finished residency, and have now started my fellowship year in Women’s Imaging/breast imaging at UCSF.
Clare Tobin – Student Researcher; B.A. in Human Biology
After graduating from Stanford in 2006, I moved to NYC and worked freelance as a professional dancer. In 2010, my husband (also ’06) and I moved to his hometown of Salt Lake City. I worked for a few years at a healthcare nonprofit, focused on engaging consumers in making informed healthcare decisions, while pursuing a joint Master’s in Public Policy/Master’s in Public Health at the University of Utah. Since graduating in 2014, I’ve been working as a nonpartisan fiscal analyst for the Utah State Legislature, covering the human services area of the state budget. I’m still dancing part-time, with a Brazilian dance and music group in SLC called Samba Fogo.
Danny Neumann – Web Developer; B.S. in Geophysics
Since graduating in 2010, I spent several years in Houston, then a year in Hawaii, then a stint in Washington State and finally ended back up in Houston. I work as a remote software developer for a company in Hawaii. In my free time, I enjoy entertaining the thought that I’m never going to move again.
Eric Whitney – Student Researcher; B.A. in Human Biology
After graduating from Stanford in 2010, I was accepted as a Teach for America corps member and spent two years teaching first grade at Excellence Girls Charter School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. I then spent a year completing a post-bacc at Northwestern University and a year performing basic science research before beginning medical school at the University of Chicago in 2014. I am now a fourth-year medical student and am currently applying to psychiatry residency programs with the goal of eventually sub-specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. My hope is to pursue a career in academic or public psychiatry with a focus on working with children from underserved communities and systems related to trauma, foster care, and juvenile justice. I met my wife while teaching and we live together in Chicago.
Faren Clum – Project Leader & Student Researcher; B.A. in Human Biology
I was a student researcher and then project leader from 2006-2010 and then I organized a 10-year reunion in 2011. HOPES was such a defining part of college for me.
After a couple of years of prerequisites, I went to UCSF for medical school, graduating in 2015. I’m now a third-year internal medicine resident at UCSF and will graduate in June 2018. I want to do primary care and likely some palliative care as well. The incredible people I met in the HD community taught me a lot about the value of medical care and a good relationship with providers, even when we cannot yet slow or stop the disease process itself.
I met my fiancé, Dana, in medical school and we are planning our wedding for 2019. He’s a surgeon, in the middle of residency as well, and we are hoping to move to D.C. next July for him to do a couple years of research at the NIH. We have a fiesty bundle of furry love named Wilbur, but we just call him Kat.
Hannah Boutros – Student Researcher; B.A. in Human Biology
I graduated in June of 2016 and spent a year in SF working for Collective Health, a startup that is focused on making health insurance more transparent and understandable for employers and their employees. After that, I traveled to Southeast Asia for a month, then started medical school at UNC Chapel Hill last month. It’s been a great experience so far! We’ve already discussed HD in a couple of my classes. I’m really glad to have been a part of HOPES while at Stanford. My experience has definitely shaped the type of physician I hope to be.
Jeffrey Choi – Student Researcher; B.S. in Biology & B.A. in Classics
After working with HOPES and finishing my coterm in Biology, I worked for half a year at a cancer molecular diagnostics startup as an intern in the science curation team, where my main role was to peruse the scientific literature and catalog published data regarding genomic variants of solid cancers and their effects on disease prognosis and clinical drug response. I started medical school at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in Aug 2015 and am now a quarter way through with my clinical rotations of third year!
Kim Taub – Project leader & Student Researcher; B.A. in Human Biology
Since graduating from Stanford, I moved back home to Chicago where I attended medical school at the University of Chicago. I married my husband shortly before graduating medical school. I then went on to Northwestern for my residency in Anesthesiology followed by cardiothoracic Anesthesia fellowship back at the University of Chicago. I’ve been working as an attending anesthesiologist at an academic medical center and teaching residents for the past 3 years. I have 2 beautiful children; my daughter Hannah is 4 and my son Darwin just turned 1. I feel very strongly that writing for HOPES was an excellent foundation for learning how to “translate” medical terminology for patients and their families, a skill I use every day as I talk to my patients before surgery.
Kristen Powers – Student Researcher & Project Co-leader; B.A. in African & African-American Studies
After serving as a HOPES student researcher for four years, I now find myself back in my home state of North Carolina, serving as the Advocacy Coordinator at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, NC. Since graduating in 2016, I continue to advocate for my family as two members are still at-risk of Huntington’s disease.
Margot Hedlin – Project Leader & Student Researcher; B.S. in Biology
I’ve recently finished medical school at University of North Carolina, where I learned the beauty of languid summer nights on a riverbank and the true meaning of “bless your heart”. I moved to NYC a few months ago to start residency in internal medicine at NYU. Now I spend most of my waking hours at Bellevue Hospital, where my patients are sassy Mexican matriarchs who call me “mami,” Fulani-speaking survivors of torture, sweet-natured heroin addicts who show me which veins to draw blood from, and prisoners with schizophrenia who tell me that they’ll make better choices in their next reincarnation. In true New York fashion, I have one human roommate and two bike roommates, and I live across the street from a speakeasy and a bitters bar.
I’ll forever be grateful to HOPES for nurturing my interest in both medicine and writing. While the subject of my writing has changed as I’ve developed my interest in medicine, you can read my medical narrative at http://biologicalbeing.tumblr.com/.
Natty Jumreornvong – Project Co-leader & Student Researcher; B.A. Human Biology
I’m a first-year medical student at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (early accepted Flexmed scholar). Working with HOPES as a project coleader shaped my medical career as a researcher, physician (if I pass medical school), and advocate for people with disabilities at a global scale. During my time with HOPES, I’ve co-founded an electronic health records company that serves 5000 patients with chronic disabilities in rural Thailand. I also wrote articles related to assistive technology and global HD, and taught middle and high schoolers about HD. My interest in education, technology and international health currently led me to start Thailand’s first assistive technology integrated university level curriculum to allow students with disabilities in the STEM field to have more educational accessibilities. My honors thesis on social enterprise and disability wellbeing also led to a first author publication. For my commitment to the disabled community as an advocate and scholar, I’ve received the social innovator award from the Princess of Thailand and was featured on Stanford News.
Serenity Nguyen – Graphic Designer; B.S. in Mechanical Engineering
Today, I am working as a product development engineer for a wind turbine startup in Mountain View. I have been enjoying working in the clean energy sector and in the engineering design space. I am always delighted to see the HOPES team continue to develop the website and the amazing projects the team is working on.
Shashikant Khandelwal – Web Developer; Graduate Student in Computer Science
I was a Stanford graduate Student in CS and worked for HOPES as a webmaster for a quarter or two. Thanks for Prof Durham for starting this noble initiative of sharing information about Huntington’s Disease. After Stanford, I co-founded a shopping search engine called TheFind, which was eventually acquired by Facebook. As of 2017, I’m currently at Facebook working on advertising systems.
Stephanie Liou – Project Leader & Student Researcher & Webmaster; B.S. in Science, Technology, and Society
After graduation I worked at the fantastic Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto, CA as a Stanford Public Interest Network (SPIN) Fellow. I then moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington School of Medicine and joined the National Health Service Corps. In Seattle, I discovered the joys of kayaking and also drew from my experiences with HOPES to lead outreach and education programs on health insurance enrollment. I am pursuing a career as a primary care pediatrician and plan to work in an urban underserved area. I am also getting married in 2018 and hope to adopt a puppy in the next few years (though several plants have recently perished under my watch, which is alarming). I will never forget the warmth of the HOPES family and those incredible mango quesadillas!
Taylor Altman – Student Researcher; B.A. in Human Biology
After graduating from Stanford in 2006, I earned my MFA in Creative Writing at Boston University in 2007. While in Boston, I continued my HOPES work for two summers by interning at Dr. Marcy MacDonald’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital.
In 2007, I moved back home to Las Vegas, where I taught English at the College of Southern Nevada for two years. Then I came back to the Bay Area to work at QuestBridge, a non-profit that connects high-achieving low-income students with college scholarships. In 2013, I entered Berkeley Law School. After graduating in 2016, I began working as an associate at Keesal, Young & Logan in San Francisco, where I practice civil litigation in the securities, employment, and maritime industries. Since college, I have also published a book of poetry, Swimming Back, and I continue to write and publish poetry and essays.
Will St. Amant – Student Researcher & Project Co-leader, B.A. in Human Biology
Two years post-graduation, I am working in San Francisco at Bain & Company. I have worked on projects ranging from big pharma drug launches to self-driving car strategy to fashion/retail inventory management. While I had intended to go to medical school, I decided I am better suited to tackle global health issues from a leadership position in the business or NGO space. Currently I am taking a 6 months leave from Bain to help open dialysis clinics in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania with Africa Healthcare Network, and I am thinking of applying to grad school in the near future to pursue an MBA paired with an MPP or MPH.