From refugee in Sweden to Montevideo, Uruguay, then the U.S. and New Zealand. Now living and working in Colorado — a career built across four countries.

My story

My story begins as a refugee. I grew up in Sweden, where I learned several languages early — an experience that shaped how I listen, and how I think about belonging, access to health, and what it means to be a newcomer in another country's health system. As a teenager my family moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, where I finished high school.

I earned my MD at the University of the Republic of Uruguay in Montevideo. During medical school I worked in research in neuroscience and in maternal-fetal medicine, publishing in both fields — and I worked shifts at McDonald's to pay for my education. Both experiences stayed with me: the discipline of the bench, and the reality of working your way through.

From there I completed a research fellowship at Wake Forest under an NIH Fogarty award, and finished family medicine residency at MAHEC in Hendersonville/Asheville, North Carolina. My work then moved into academic medicine at the University of Colorado, into medical director leadership at value-based primary care clinics such as Iora/One Medical in Aurora, Colorado, and across the Pacific to clinical director roles in rural and urban New Zealand.

Today I am Center Medical Director at Oak Street Health in Aurora, Colorado, and concurrently co-founder and CEO of AUDOVA^™, an AI clinical communication coaching company. I am multilingual, and most of my career has been spent caring for Medicare, Medicaid, rural, and immigrant populations.

I care deeply about underserved communities — about social determinants of health, health literacy, and access to care. Whether in a rural New Zealand clinic, a value-based primary care center in the US, or a refugee story like my own, I believe the quality of the conversation is part of the quality of the care.