Tamika is currently a Senior Resident in Internal Medicine at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. She lives on beautiful Ocean Beach next to the Golden Gate Park with her even more beautiful 4 year old daughter, Bailey Simone. Tamika left her home in Miami, Florida to attend Northwestern University for both her undergraduate and medical studies. She majored in psychology because she knew no matter where the future would lead, she would always need to have a deep understanding of people’s motivations and behaviors. As an undergrad, she founded HALO, HIV/AIDS Literacy Organization, which aimed to increase awareness and activism through speaker and art events, benefit concerts and drives, and volunteering with local social service agencies. HALO was honored as the Most Outstanding New Student Organization in 2005. As a medical student, she dedicated herself to establishing biannual primary care medical trips to her home country of Jamaica through her work with the Northwestern University Alliance for International Development.

Tamika has a passion for education, which she expressed by becoming the pipleline programs coordinator for the Student National Medical Association. In this role she organized health education sessions for middle school students and a medical school exposure program for high school seniors to increase recruitment of minority students into the health professions.

Tamika finally realized her dream of living in California when she started her internal medicine residency at UCSF Medical Center. She is interested in improving health delivery systems and conducted a review of implementation strategies for the Patient Centered Medical Home, an intergral component of healthcare reform. She will be graduating June 2013 and will begin her career as a hospital medicine physician in Northern California. Her goals now are to love herself, love her family and friends, and love this world to the fullest.