Akunna assists in leading the Prehealth Advising team, with a primary focus on managing the Prehealth Advising services to MIT students and alumni. He holds a M.Ed. in Educational Administration from UMass Boston and a B.A. in English from Clark University. Akunna’s experience includes higher education advising and career counseling, along with prior experience advising high school students and teaching.

Ariel helps students develop their educational and career plans, especially those pursuing careers in medicine as well as in the Life Sciences, Biotech, and Pharma career communities. Ariel’s background includes extensive international administration in higher education and NGOs in the US, Europe, and the Middle East. She earned her Bachelor’s in Culture & Communication from Ithaca College and a Master’s degree in Intercultural Theology from Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, Germany.

As the Director of Health Professions Advising at Wellesley College, Cindy works with students and alums as they prepare for and apply to patient-facing graduate programs. In particular, she works extensively with medical and dental school applicants through a long and complicated process, including organizing Wellesley’s Medical Professions Advising Committee. Cindy loves learning and helping others to achieve their goals. Cindy attended Kalamazoo College, a small liberal arts school in Michigan, where she earned her BA in Psychology. She then earned two Master’s Degrees, one in education and a second in business, before completing my Doctorate in Education at Northeastern University. In her free time, Cindy loves spending time outside hiking, rock climbing, doing parkour and growing veggies in her community garden.

Ashti is a MIT ‘20 graduate and a current medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Physician Scientist Training Program - 4 year MD + 1 year funded research). She was Course 9 at MIT, enjoyed being part of the McCormick community, served on the UA for all 4 years, and was heavily involved in research. Currently, she is interested in pursuing a career as a surgeon-scientist.

Tabrez was born and raised in NYC and attended MIT from 2015 to 2019, graduating with a B.Sc in Chemistry (Course 5). While at MIT, he was involved with the student health liaison group MedLinks and volunteered across the river at MGH. He is currently a 3rd year medical student at the SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and plans on going into General Surgery for residency, with an interest in Trauma/Surgical Critical Care.

Rhoda Tano-Menka is currently a research technician in the Gaiha Lab of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. She works on a team aiming to develop a viral escape mutation-resistant vaccine by developing therapies targeting structurally constrained viral regions crucial to viral fitness. She received her BA cum laude with honors in chemistry from Wellesley College, where she was awarded membership in the Sigma Xi research honors society after successfully completing and defending a senior honors thesis that explored the role of protective HLA-B*57 amino acid residues associated with HIV control to elucidate the divergent clinical outcomes of HIV Infection. In the fall of 2022, Rhoda will begin an MD degree at the Yale, Stanford, or Dartmouth medical school. Although she is undecided about her future specialty, she plans to keep pursuing her passion for research. She ultimately aims to become a physician-scientist to help solve critical unmet needs in medicine, particularly in the field of infectious disease immunology. Rhoda was born and raised in Ghana. Having grown up in a country with a limited healthcare infrastructure, she is committed to global health and equity in healthcare. In January 2021, she co-founded R&G salad bar and more, a healthy food restaurant dedicated to alleviating the rise in cardiovascular and related diseases brought on by the mass influx of fast-food restaurants into the country. In her free time, Rhoda loves to dance, cook meals from different parts of the world, and watch old sitcoms from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.