Yang Jae Lee, MD

Hi everyone! I was born in Seoul, South Korea, and I have lived ineleven places in five countries on three continents. Inspired by life experiences, travels, and studies, I developed strong interest in global health and development. I received a research and journalism grant to go to Uganda between my junior and senior year of college. From this experience, I won the Mark of Excellence Award for the best student journalism in the United States in my category and conducted global health research from inception to publication. More importantly, I built many lasting relationships with community members and collaborators. After graduating from college, I deferred my acceptance to medical school to travel, and to work with colleagues in Uganda with grants they had received. In 2018, during medical school, I leveraged relationships that I built in Uganda as well as funding networks in the United States to become the founding CEO of Empower Through Health, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We are the main source of healthcare for a catchment area of 70,000 people, and we run a Global Health Institute conducting research and engaging hundreds of students. We work in close collaboration with the government to share resources and foster synergistic work. We are initiating a model for implementation of mental healthcare in rural low-income countries through close collaboration with district health and researchers at Makerere University. I chose to become a physician because of my faith in our common humanity, deep curiosity of other people’s experiences, and a desire to improve the lives of those most marginalized. I think that psychiatry is the best option to meet all objectives. In addition to continuing my current global health work, I seek to find opportunities to synergize my passion of working on humanity’s greatest challenges with practice of clinical psychiatry.