Vanessa Ozomaro, the daughter of a nurse who is a Nigerian immigrant, grew up in St. Paul and says her urban high school had “a very diverse” environment. “A lot of my friends had immigrant backgrounds, east African or Hmong, and we often had conversations about their experiences with the health care system,” Ozomaro says. That upbringing convinced her that it’s important for patients to be comfortable with and able to communicate with their physicians. “I never had an African, or an African American, physician see me. I always felt like there were a lot of people who didn’t look like me, in medical [settings] and in the sciences generally.” Read more about Vanessa's experience in the MetroPAP program.