Aminata Traore

Hello everyone! I was born and raised in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire beforemoving to Virginia at age 11. After relocating to a larger West African immigrant community in Baltimore as a teenager, I became interested in the broader immigrant experience of acclimating to life in the US, including the social justice and healthcare issues facing immigrant populations. This interest stayed with me during my time at Dartmouth College, where I pursued a position as a legal intern for a non-profit immigration firm to learn more about immigration law and explore different ways to become an active advocate. After graduating with a degree in psychology, I spent two years researching the impact of risk behaviors in movies and TV shows on children/teens before starting medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. During medical school, I enjoyed getting involved in the West Philadelphia community and got a chance to practice my French by tutoring and mentoring newly arrived francophone middle schoolers. I continued my work in immigration advocacy through my involvement with the Philadelphia Human Rights Clinic, which facilitates connections between asylum seekers and medical providers, as well as my summer providing resettlement social services to newly arrived refugees in Philadelphia. My interests in psychiatry include community and cultural psychiatry (especially immigrant mental health), forensic psychiatry, women’s mental health, and global psychiatry. I am grateful to be able to work on normalizing and promoting mental health in marginalized populations with the support of the Yale community! Outside of medicine, I enjoy baking, reading fiction, the occasional Netflix binge, and experiencing different cultures through traveling, podcasts, and food.