Class of 2023

library almost as much as trips Up North to her family cabin – she could read at least two Boxcar Children books each way! She was the best water skier in the family, at least until her younger brother and sister were old enough to water ski. A trip to the Minnesota State Fair was always a summer highlight. Anna has never, ever missed a year! In the winter she loved downhill skiing with her family, and each spring brought another season of golfing on the Champlin Park High School team.

Anna continued her education at the College of Saint Benedict, located in central Minnesota. She knew from day one she was interested in medicine. She studied biology and German, played cello in the orchestra, and started volunteering at the local emergency department. Her experience at the emergency department solidified her decision to pursue attending medical school. Her eyes were opened to many of the social disparities in the greater St. Cloud area as well as the power of the patient-provider relationship. Anna loved her time at St. Ben’s, including her years fostering community life as a Resident Assistant, cheering on the Johnnies at football games, and many hours spent studying and talking with her fellow Bennies at the Local Blend.

After graduating from St. Ben’s, Anna started medical school at the University of Minnesota. She was happy to continue her education in Minnesota close to family and friends – and the state fair of course! During her third year of medical school Anna completed a 10 month longitudinal clerkship in St. Paul with a focus on social determinants of health. She began volunteering at the Higher Ground Shelter and is very excited to continue working with this organization and the St. Paul community as a whole as a resident at United Family Medicine. Anna’s favorite part of her longitudinal clerkship was communication training through improv. It was simultaneously terrifying and the most educational experience she’s had!

Anna is very excited to start residency at United Family Medicine. She loves primary care, community medicine, and talking to people all day! In her spare time Anna enjoys quilting and sewing, spending time with her parents, siblings, and in-laws, and beating her husband at cribbage while they cheer on the Minnesota Vikings.

from the Western suburbs of Minneapolis, she wanted to leave the Midwest at the soonest opportunity. And like many older (but still youngish), wiser people who left, she is now thrilled to be returning to the Twin Cities and to be joining United Family Medicine. 

Amy’s initial departure from Minnesota brought her to Wellesley College, a women’s college outside of Boston. Medicine was not yet on her radar as a serious prospect, and so she majored in French, a love of which had begun during many years of French classes at Hopkins High School. Plus majoring in French meant she got to spend a year studying in Provence, eating cheese and drinking wine, and why would one not want to do that.  

Her next adventure brought her to New Orleans as a math teacher with Teach for America. She spent two years in St. Bernard Parish helping the school district get back to capacity after Hurricane Katrina. She went to many crawfish boils and football games, Go Owls. It makes her feel both proud and old to know that one of her former students is now in her second year of medical school at LSU.

The next stop was Arkansas, a strange detour inspired by a love of literature and the whimsical idea of working at a magazine. She didn’t find her passion in that endeavor, but she did meet her life partner, so not a bad move overall. 

Together, the pair moved to New York City, and this is where Amy came to her senses and realized she should be a doctor. She went back to school to study science, and after two years was lucky enough to be invited to study medicine at Columbia’s College of Physicians & Surgeons. While in medical school she surrounded herself with family physicians and others interested in primary care, because they were interested in the same things she was: social justice, community-based healthcare, treating the whole person, etc. Her favorite moments throughout medical school were spent with patients—whether at the community hospital in Inwood, on the Zuni reservation, at the urban adolescent clinic, or in the family medicine practice in Washington Heights. She feels like she has finally found her calling. 

Thus it is with great happiness that she will be returning to Minnesota and becoming a member of the United Family Medicine team. She can’t wait to get to know the West 7th Community and spend time with her new patients. And she is really excited to be near Cossetta’s, where she used to get a pistachio gelato after every visit to the dentist as a child. What a treat it all will be. 

the second of four children—two boys, two girls. They grew up playing laser tag in camouflage fatigues, watching Doris Day movies and old Westerns, at the behest of their father, and making their own Halloween costumes behind their mother's sewing machine.

Maura's gregarious (re: loud) nature led her parents to enroll her summer theater camps to get her out of the house. Joke was on them because she decided that she wanted to become a professional actor and spent her later summers running off with the circus (re: Renaissance Fairs). Her reasonable parents required that she attend a "real" college which led her to audition for a Bachelor of Fine Arts Program in some place in the middle of the country (re: University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program). Overjoyed at her acceptance, she moved to the Midwest and found her people.

After completing her actor training, Maura moved to Chicago to pursue stage work. She worked in summer stock regional theaters, trained at Second City, managed a yarn shop, waited tables and lived with a bunch of strangers from Craigslist. After a few years of hustling, she got a "day job" working as a standardized patient at a medical school. As she worked with student doctors to deepen their interpersonal acumen, she discovered that her arts education and strong communication skills uniquely positioned her to become a primary care doctor. Three years and a night school post-bacc degree later, she was honored to attend the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine. Being on the other side of the medical encounter, the clinician evaluated by standardized and real patients alike, has been the most rewarding and challenging experience of her life. 

Her research work in medical school included studying the bystander effect in rats, analyzing the effect of yoga on pain and stress in low-resource communities and finding a husband. The third was the most successful, hands down. Maura met John online between M1 and M2. She was determined that he must fall in love with her before she fell apart during Step 1 study block, ask her to marry him before she vanished into M3, marry her before M4 so he could enjoy the illusion of having a wife before intern year absconded her yet again. A woman of resolve and grit, she succeeded on all accounts. John is her best bud, cutest bearded and bald guy, most basic beau whose favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla and favorite TV show is the Bachelor. He was even willing to come be her emotional support husband when she did a rural medicine away rotation in Alaska, 26 miles northern of the Arctic Circle, in January. 

Maura chose UFM because it is an unopposed program, at a community hospital with strong OB, with an FQHC affiliation, connected to the needs of an urban community with opportunities for rural experiences. Although being Dr. Jacobi is pretty cool, her favorite title is "Auntie" and an extra special bonus is that Maura will finally be living in the same town as one of her five nephews. When she isn't spoiling the littles, she'll likely be sewing her own clothing, knitting sweaters, reading novels, biking along the river or getting involved at her church. She hopes to spend her life bouncing back and forth between reenacting her honeymoon in Hawaii and working her heart out in Alaska. 

she spent winters learning to skate at the local civic center and summers swimming, inner-tubing, and water-skiing on the lake right outside her back door. As the daughter of former music and science teachers, an appreciation for both subjects was impressed upon her from a young age. To satisfy her musical inclinations, Emma dabbled in playing the violin, piano, clarinet, and tenor saxophone, as well as singing in any choir that would have her. She cultivated her love for science and mathematics participating in science club, math league, and counting fruit flies with her biology teacher.

After graduating from New London-Spicer High School, her love for both music and science led Emma to St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. Although she was interested in a career in medicine, Emma happened to fall in love with the mathematics department at St. Olaf. She found herself continually enrolling in math courses until she had completed a math major, which culminated with a senior project researching the evolution of emphysema using fractal mathematics (cue “Let It Go” from Frozen). Throughout her math courses, she continued to wonder about a career in medicine. Her decision to go to medical school was cemented after spending one summer interning with a family medicine trained geriatrician, who also happened to be a St. Olaf grad, in the Twin Cities. During that summer, she got to experience first-hand the joys of forming meaningful relationships with patients and their families. She began to think that perhaps a future as a family physician was her calling. 

After graduating from St. Olaf, Emma decided she needed to gain some “real world” experience before continuing her education. She knew that she wanted to gain some perspective on challenges facing her future patients, so she spent a year volunteering through Lutheran Volunteer Corps (an organization similar to AmeriCorps) as a tutoring coordinator and education advocate for children who had experienced homelessness at Simpson Housing Services in Minneapolis. She spent her days lesson planning, tutoring, and advocating for her K-5th graders to have better access to educational resources. Her year working with homeless children allowed her to reflect on all the privilege that she had experienced in life and cemented her desire to work with underserved populations as a physician. 

Emma attended the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth campus, for her first two years of medical school. She spent these two years cultivating lasting friendships, studying countless flashcards, and continuing to sing with a local choir. When her third year of medical school rolled around, she was sad to leave the shores of Lake Superior, but excited to venture to Long Prairie, MN, where she would participate in the Rural Physician Associate Program (RPAP) for most of her third year rotations. Through her RPAP experience, Emma had the opportunity to gain tons of hands-on experience, as she was the only medical student at the small, rural clinic and hospital. Her time spent in Long Prairie working with full-spectrum family medicine physicians developed her passion for caring for patients from cradle to grave, and she knew that the only way forward was to become a family medicine physician.

From her first interactions with the United Family Medicine Residency Program, Emma knew that it would be a great fit for her goal to practice rural, full-spectrum family medicine. She was drawn to the residency’s commitment to serving the underserved and the opportunities to continue developing a wide range of skills. She is excited to begin residency at United alongside the warm-hearted residents, faculty, and staff.

In her free time, Emma enjoys spending time with her family and friends playing board games and catching up over a good cup of coffee. She loves to explore new places with a hike or a run, read novels, and try out new recipes in the kitchen (almost all of which involve cheese of some variety). Music continues to be an important part of Emma’s life, and she is always on the hunt for a new choir to join.

my grandma always reminds me, “I’m just not a bug person!!” Something I said to her one afternoon when I was three. Although farm duties weren’t quite my thing, I loved growing up in the country, playing outside and getting to know my neighbors. 

In school, I was always on the go and seeking out new experiences. I tried out nearly every sport imaginable landing on softball, which I played into college. Both of my parents, sister and even my brother (for a summer) were actively involved in Girl Scouts, raising me to follow suit. I was a Girl Scout from the day I was born until I graduated high school and obtained the Girl Scout Gold Award. It taught me the values of leadership and community service and surrounded me with amazing and inspiring women. It was never a question throughout my childhood of what I would become, I was always set on becoming a doctor. 

After graduating from Saint Croix Central High School, I moved to another rural town to attend the College of Saint Benedict where I took full advantage of my liberal arts education. I knew from an early age I wanted to spend my life engrossed in medicine, so I chose to explore a non-traditional path for my undergraduate degree. I majored in Hispanic Studies to learn about people and gain fluency in Spanish. I studied abroad in Viña del Mar, Chile, where I developed lifelong relationships with my host family, traveled nearly 3200 miles from the Atacama Desert to Patagonia, and spent time working with children with disabilities at a local hospital.

After graduation, I chose to take a couple years after college for self-reflection and to discover my role in healthcare. During this time, I was blessed to work at Bluestone Physician Services, a mobile primary care clinic serving some of the highest risk/highest need populations in Minnesota. My experiences at Bluestone re-affirmed my passion for becoming a family physician and my desire to advocate for the underserved, not only in clinic, but at the capitol and in the community.

I attended the University of Minnesota Medical School - Duluth Campus for its focus on rural health and family medicine. Its mission closely matched my personal values and future goals as a physician to care for the whole person. This nurtured my passion for leadership and advocacy, as I worked to integrate those topics into curriculum for future students. I was newly married to my husband, David, when we first moved to Duluth and we didn’t take very long in adopting our sweet pup, Bobby. Bobby kept David company while I was buried in my studies. After finishing in Duluth, we moved to Menomonie, WI with the Rural Physician Associate Program (RPAP). I jumped into a family medicine clinic, delivering babies, volunteering at the local free clinic, and building relationships with patients. Family medicine felt so natural, even as a student. Outside of the clinic and hospital, David and I tried out most of the restaurants in town. Lucette Brewing Co. and the Acoustic Café were our go to spots. We are both drawn to the slower pace of a rural community and the sense of community we had amongst neighbors.I am more than excited to join United Family Medicine to continue to build community and learn to practice full-spectrum family medicine. When I’m not in clinic or at the hospital, I am typically spending time with my husband and our dog Bobby, reading a book, trying out new home workouts (yoga, boxing, cardio, lifting), or finding and cooking new recipes.

diverse culture and cuisine the city had to offer. Growing up, as most Seattleites do, she spent time exploring mountain trails, taking dips in 50 degree Puget Sound waters, and never using an umbrella. Some of her fondest childhood memories include river rafting/kayaking trips in Idaho, summertime family reunions in Whistler, B.C., and winters on the ski slopes. Over the years, she has developed some serious Washington pride, and has fully embraced the culture that is the PNW (Pacific Northwest), Subaru and all.

After high school, eager for sunshine, Katie left for California, attending college at Santa Clara University. Having enjoyed science and math throughout her school years, she had a good sense that medicine would be for her, and studied biology and public health. She became quite inspired by the Jesuit values that emphasized social justice, giving back to one’s community, and caring for the underserved. Through volunteer work with a transitional shelter for women and children experiencing domestic violence, she was able to see these values at play, and began to realize her deep draw toward working with vulnerable populations. After a medical mission trip in rural Panama and a semester studying tropical medicine and global health in Costa Rica, she felt a strong connection to Latinx populations, which she hoped to maintain in the years to come.

Following college, Katie worked as a mental health case manager in western Montana, a role that further opened her eyes to the stigma and challenges experienced by those with mental illness, and the interconnectedness of mental and physical health. She was fortunate to spend six months in Guatemala, where she studied Spanish, volunteered, and gained valuable perspective of the people and culture. In subsequent years, she worked in various roles in the hospital, the ED, and an occupational medicine/urgent care clinic, all of which taught her valuable skills and reinforced that medicine was the right path for her.

It was actually on a trip to Minnesota to visit friends that Katie found out she was accepted to medical school. While studying at the University of Washington, she had the opportunity to complete clinical rotations throughout the Northwest, including in Montana, Idaho, and rural Alaska. The nomadic lifestyle associated with this was both exhausting and exciting. She was also able to maintain and grow her passion for working with women and with underserved, Latinx, and refugee groups through volunteer work with various student-run clinics, workshops, and projects. One of the projects most important to her was one she put together with the goal of improving education and access to contraceptive services for incarcerated women in a town in western Montana.

The UFM residency program has felt like a true fit for Katie from the very beginning. She is thrilled to be starting the next phase of her training alongside such capable, compassionate, and enthusiastic colleagues! She hopes to find time for her personal interests, which include listening to and playing music, improving her Spanish, biking, skiing, cheering on Seattle sports teams (and quite possibly, soon enough, Minnesota ones too), and exploring all that the Twin Cities have to offer!

beauty of the natural world and gravitated towards the natural sciences. She took a quick detour after high school to spend a year studying in Cadiz, Spain, learning about Spanish grammar and Spanish beaches. Having gone so very far away, she returned to Iowa City where she studied Biology and Spanish at the University of Iowa.  There, she spent many hundreds of hours doing laboratory research for her honors thesis on the reproductive genetics of an aquatic fern. During this time she also met her husband-to-be, Lucas, while waitressing at a very fancy Iowa steakhouse. Medicine had never been on her radar, but towards the end of her undergraduate career, Amelia began working as a Spanish interpreter and health aide for a free clinic for migrant workers. The clinics, set up in dining halls and laundry rooms, were a beautifully orchestrated chaos, where medical needs were met with ingenuity and compassion. At that point she did not understand the roles each of the team members played, but she knew that she wanted to be part of it. 

Following graduation, Amelia moved with her future husband to Athens, Georgia, while he began his MFA in Photography at the University of Georgia. After many, many failed attempts at finding full-time employment with undergraduate degrees in Biology and Spanish, she returned to the tried and true world of food service. To fill the extra hours while Lucas was in school, she began working part time as Women’s Health Program Coordinator at the Athens Nurses’ Clinic. During this time she worked with medically underserved, from the rural Appalachian foothills and from down the street, and began to understand the impact of poverty on every aspect of an individual’s health. Each frustration and barrier made her want to find a way not only to provide direct care, but to work within the system to shape the way care was offered. She decided that becoming a physician would allow her to have the greatest impact. 

Returning once again to Iowa, she spent a year as a medical assistant in the medical intensive care unit before finally beginning medical school at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. She found a love of obstetrics and pediatrics combined with a passion for preventative health and embraced the career of a family medicine physician. Along the way she became a mother, spent a summer in Dili, East Timor working with midwives, completed a year-long post-sophomoric fellowship in pathology, tutored in anatomy and obstetrics and conducted a qualitative research study on breastfeeding in a rural Iowan Latinx community. She is humbled and proud to have been inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society in her final year of medical school. 

Amelia chose United Family Medicine because this truly community-based program will allow her to work alongside a dedicated group of faculty and residents to provide a full-spectrum of care to underserved groups in Saint Paul. She looks forward to learning about all aspects of family medicine and the opportunity to focus on her areas of interest of maternal-child health, addiction medicine and preventative medicine. She and her family are very excited to put down roots and grow into a new community. They look forward to swimming, cycling, hiking, dog-walking and eating (and eating) in the Twin Cities in the coming years.