Scholar Spotlight
A prolific writer of poetry and song, Nate is a dynamic speaker and isn't shy about performing in front of an audience.
Juwarat Kadiri
“Coming to America marked a pivotal change in the direction of my life. I was faced with so many challenges when adjusting to life here. In overcoming those challenges, I learned a lot about myself and where I wanted my life to go. My life experiences have been the single most influential factor on my academic and career ambitions.”
- Program: 2009 Graduate Scholarship Recipient
- Hometown: Benin City, Nigeria
- Community College: El Camino College
- Four-year College or University: University of California, Berkeley
- Graduate School: Harvard University
Biography
PROFILE: Juwarat Kadiri came to the US to attend community college in California. She hails from Benin City, a large metropolis in Southern Nigeria, and the center of that nation’s rubber industry. In the Arabic language, Juwarat’s name means treasure. She has been just that, a treasure, to her peers and teachers. After junior college, Juwarat completed her undergraduate work at Berkeley. Just a few weeks after receiving her degree in 2008, she began a research fellowship in Baltimore where she coordinated an Afro-Caribbean and African-American Women’s Study that documented the prevalence and health outcomes of low-income black women who had been victims of intimate partner violence in Baltimore and the US Virgin Islands. The fellowship was under the auspices of the Centers for Disease Control, Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, and the Kennedy Krieger Institute. But with so much success in such a short time, Juwarat has not forgotten her roots and her family in Nigeria. She said she owes her selection as a Scholar to her family. “Through every step of my journey they have been there–supporting, counseling, and praying for me. The fact that our individual journeys have separated us into three different continents has been immaterial to that constant flow of love and support I get from them.”
ASPIRATION: Juwarat said her childhood experiences living in a disadvantaged area of Benin City, “awakened in me a sense of duty to underserved communities.” Armed eventually with a medical degree, she hopes to become a physician that specializes in the care of women and children in communities that are low-income, disadvantaged, and medically underserved throughout the world.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE: During her years as an undergraduate, Juwarat was a student research assistant at the Northern California Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center in Oakland. Working with children with Sickle Cell was close to Juwarat’s heart as her best friend growing up in Nigeria suffered with the disease.
ACCOLADES: At UC Berkeley, she received a Regents and Chancellor’s Scholarship and several other academic distinctions, including “Highest Distinction in General Scholarship,” Berkeley’s equivalent to being named summa cum laude. She also received a research fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
INTERESTING FACT: Juwarat says she watches an “obsene amount” of television!
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