The 2nd annual EmpowerMED symposium took place in Berkeley Way West this past November. EmpowerMED is designed to expose pre-health students to the various health professional fields they can enter within the medical and public health fields. During the symposium, undergraduate students have the opportunity to connect with a diverse panel of local health professionals and ask questions about their career journey to gain insight into what future they would like to envision for themselves. This event was hosted by UC Berkeley’s public health student organization Medicine, Education, and Development for Low-Income Families Everywhere (MEDLIFE) and the UC Berkeley Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health (MCAH) LEAP program. The event was open to all UC Berkeley undergraduates from all years and majors and extended to CSU East Bay students. Over 70 student attendees registered for the event along with seven guest speakers.
When MEDLIFE hosted the first EmpowerMED symposium in Spring 2024, they were motivated by the shared sentiment that pre-health undergraduates experience at Berkeley with difficulty navigating health careers. With UC Berkeley, being such a large and diverse institute, it’s easy to feel lost. Most pre-health students think the only way they can pursue a health career is through becoming a doctor, but in actuality, there are several pathways one can take to become a health professional, it just takes some exposure! Especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, navigating career journeys can feel very intimidating and isolating. MEDLIFE President and LEAP Outreach Fellow, Grecia Garcia, who was key in organizing the event, is a pre-medical student from disadvantaged backgrounds herself and sought to assemble the panel of speakers who were all from disadvantaged backgrounds as well. In Grecia’s undergraduate journey, hearing from other disadvantaged medical professionals and having that representation was vital for her confidence in pursuing medicine so she wanted to create and extend that opportunity to the larger Berkeley undergraduate community.
This year’s theme, “A Walk Through Time” featured seven health professionals at different stages in their careers:
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Elisa Padron – Stanford School of Medicine student, UC Berkeley MCAH MPH 11-month student
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Ahmed Abubakari, MD – OB/GYN, UC Berkeley MCAH MPH 11-month student
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Mercedes Paredes, MD, PhD – UCSF Neurology, Neuroscience, and Biomedical Sciences Assistant Professor
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Gloria Cheng, MS – Sutter Health Internal Medicine Physician Assistant
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Agere Teshale – UC Berkeley MCAH MPH first-year student, Doula
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Yasamin Vafai, MD – UCSF Pediatrics First-year Resident
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Kamu Potharaju, MS – UC Berkeley - UCSF Joint Medical Program third-year medical student
With this diverse panel, students were able to ask and hear about what it was like navigating gap years, what led to career changes, motivations for pursuing certain degrees, and much more! No panelists had a perfect plan or pathway into their careers, and they were all vulnerable about their undergraduate journeys, sharing advice and encouragement with attendees. All panelists apart from one were affiliated with UC Berkeley at some point in their careers, whether as an undergraduate, graduate, or working professional. This was invaluable as panelists could give specific advice about what they did at Berkeley to help them discover their pathways. 
The event began with words from the MEDLIFE founder, Nick Ellis, who started the non-profit in 2001 and spoke about the increasing need for public health professionals to address health inequities. Following his opening statement, there was a structured panel discussion where all panelists answered questions created by MEDLIFE’s internal board. After the structured panel discussions, attendees were able to ask their own questions in an open Q+A session, asking about how to find good mentorship and where to start in career exploration. Attendees were then provided meals to partake in a peer-networking lunch to meet other pre-health undergraduates and discuss their academic goals and motivations. Returning from lunch, there was a rotating network session with guest speakers which allowed students to ask questions in a more intimate setting. All attendees formed small groups and were able to spend ten minutes with each panelist and get to know each other better. Finally, the event was closed by the MEDLIFE executive board, Grecia Garcia, Bryan Moreno, and Hannah Corr.
The annual EmpowerMED symposium will be hosted again in the 2025-2026 academic year in collaboration with LEAP. If you are interested in attending EmpowerMED in the future, please follow @ucbmedlife on Instagram for updates or keep in touch with MEDLIFE via email (ucbmedlife@gmail.com). If you’d like to contribute directly to the organization and symposium in the future, MEDLIFE recruits interns at the beginning of every semester. If you’d like to know more about Berkeley’s School of Public Health MCAH LEAP program please visit https://mcah.berkeley.edu/leap-undergraduate-program. Advanced LEAP scholar applications open every fall semester, if you’d like to get more involved you can follow @ucberkeleyleap on Instagram for updates!