Lucinda Lai, MPhil, MD is a resident in the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She grew up in San Jose, California as the daughter of Cambodian refugees. Her parents’ stories of survival and resilience inspired her to pursue a career in medicine. She graduated from Stanford University in 2011 with a degree in Human Biology. She then spent a year working on the Thai-Burma border with the non-profit organization Burma Border Projects, working to build up mental health services for refugees. She was awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship to complete a master’s degree in sociology, with a focus on the political economy of public health. She received her MD from Harvard Medical School in 2017.  

She hopes to combine her clinical training in Emergency Medicine with her background in sociological research in order to engage with the root causes of illness and inequality that lead people to seek emergency care. She is working to uphold a vision of the world in which justice and health are available to anyone who comes through the door, anytime, anywhere.