Marcos Armendáriz, MD, is recognized at the 2024 UCSF Diversity Graduation
Graduating from UC San Francisco is the end of one rewarding journey and the start of another.
For the new alumni recently honored at UCSF Diversity Graduation, it not only signals the beginning of a career in health care but also an opportunity to represent and serve traditionally marginalized groups of people. People just like them.
“We come from different places,” said Sangeeta Agarawal, NP, RN, MS. “We may have very different cultural backgrounds and family values but there’s a place for everyone and everything.” The registered nurse and integrated medicine practitioner is a 2024 graduate of the Adult Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner program in the UCSF School of Nursing, specializing in occupational and environmental health nursing.
She was one of several 2024 graduates at the annual event hosted by the UCSF Office of Diversity and Outreach celebrating Black, Latinx, Indigenous and other people of color BIPOC, disabled and LGBTQ+ graduates from UCSF professional schools and Graduate Division. The celebratory event, held in the Millberry Union Conference Center at UCSF Parnassus Heights, included inspiring remarks from Renee Navarro, MD, PharmD, UCSF vice chancellor of diversity and outreach, Eddy Ruiz, PhD, UCSF assistant vice chancellor of climate and belonging, and many others.
“We’re so proud of your accomplishments at UCSF,” Navarro told the graduates. “UCSF is an amazing place because of its people and our students are a big part of what makes this University special. Be an ally and empower others to do likewise.”
Diverse paths converge at UCSF
Like many of the graduates honored, Agarawal’s path to UCSF wasn’t always clear.
“As a child, I didn’t really have many resources or support,” Agarawal said of her early life in northern India. “I grew up on the streets and decided that school was the way to go. I decided to enroll myself in school. I studied by street lights. I was always passionate about health care because I had seen my great grandfather when I was very young providing health care to the community.”
Not having access to steady food, housing and health care during her childhood motivated Agarawal to focus on academics throughout much of her life.
“Coming from that background, having a place where I could design the future and have control over my destiny about what I want to be was really important,” she said. “At the same time, as I grew and matured, I also wanted to feel connected to my tradition and my roots and the good things that I learned.”
Agarawal gives back as the diversity, inclusion and outreach representative in the UCSF Associated Students of the School of Nursing.
Already a computer engineer with a focus in AI and mobile computing when she arrived on campus, Agarawal plans to continue at UCSF in pursuit of her PhD degree.
“The world is an oyster in terms of what I’m going do with all of this,” she laughed.
Read the complete story on the UCSF News website.