Dr. Fallon Chipidza ’10 is a Harvard University medical school grad whose commitment runs deep.
“My experiences growing up in Zimbabwe were the initial factors that drew me to medicine,” she says. “Like most developing countries, Zimbabwe faces many health challenges. The burden of diseases is much greater in Sub-Saharan Africa than most places in the world, so I think it was that desire to want to change the status quo that initially drew me to medicine.”
Even with that clear vision, the distinctly different subjects of biochemistry and economics appealed to her.
“Scientists and economists approach problems differently. I wanted a well-rounded education, and I wanted to take advantage of everything that Hamilton offered, so I went for the double major,” Chipidza says.
She had a mini-internship at a local hospital, did three summers of science research on campus, and between her junior and senior year, she interned at Pfizer, Inc., in Connecticut.
Her honors and achievements at Hamilton included winning a national Davis Projects for Peace grant, a $10,000 award, to create a chicken business to help cover costs at a preschool for needy children in Zimbabwe.
“The real world is much bigger and more complex than the facts and numbers students learn in class. In hindsight, I think my outside experiences at Hamilton taught me life’s lessons that I could have never gotten in a class setting,” she says.
