About

How it all started, in my own words…

Skin is the apparent art of a person, and in a medical sense, it is the parchment on which disease processes can be depicted and tells a great story about a patient. The largest and most apparent organ of the body does this for each human being. When exploring the various fields of medicine as a medical student, intially, the field of dermatology struck me in a very special way. The skin communicates and it is our own individual palette and a means of advertisement. From manifestations of systemic diseases, to the wild colors of a makeup artist, to the permanence of tattoos, the skin exposes a cultural canvas. I emersed myself into research in dermatology to understand better how and why the skin communicates. It was here I was exposed to a deeper level of medicine and started to unveil the immunologic mechansims of diseases processes and how allergic responses manifest into the skin. The medical umbrella of allergy and immunology was the missing piece to my intial interest of the skin and it became my focus as the field of medicine that spoke to me.   

 My goal to learn more and to one day become fluent in the language and culture of allergy and immunology began with the stepping stone of becoming a knowledgable internist in order to understand each body system and how it communicates disease processes. My thirst for learning has driven me to work with world renowned allergists and immunologist in Cleveland, OH. It was here where my curiosity exploded and I knew this was the answer to my question of the field that interwined the concepts ofskin, immunologic diseases, allergy and internal medicine. Having a foundation of research in molecular biology, biochemistry, and clinical psychology, it has been instilled in me to pursue knowledge and to learn things ‘outside of the box’. I believe that this type of learning is imperative for the field of allergy and immunology as new treatments and diseases are being studied daily.