Dr. Erik Carlson ’16

Major: Science-Preprofessional Studies
Suppl. Major: Spanish

Accompanying seriously ill patients through the most difficult moments of their lives

HOOK
Dr. Erik Carlson ’16 — Hospice and palliative medicine fellow at Mount Sinai and certified medical Spanish interpreter whose bilingual care accompanies seriously ill, low-income, and immigrant patients through their most difficult moments.

Building his career around accompaniment—sitting with people through the most difficult moments of their lives—Dr. Erik Carlson ’16 is a hospice and palliative medicine fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at New York City’s Mount Sinai, where he cares for patients living with serious, life-limiting illnesses, helping them name what matters most to them and building their care around the answer. His calling crystallized during his internal medicine residency at Columbia University Medical Center, where caring for patients from the surrounding Washington Heights community taught him that, more often than not, what his patients needed most was not a novel treatment or procedure, but a dedicated presence.

Being present with his patients also meant asking what had brought them to his exam room. Increasingly, he found the answer lay upstream, in polluted air, contaminated water, and extreme heat—threats to his patients’ dignity and survival that fell heaviest on those with the fewest resources to withstand them. At Columbia, Carlson completed a Graduate Medical Education Distinction in Climate Change, Sustainability, and Health, and he now serves as a Climate and Health Science Policy Fellow through the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, collaborating with the Environmental Defense Fund and the Federation of American Scientists on work that supports state and national policy.

Throughout his training, Carlson has worked to expand access to person-centered care. In the year after graduating, he was the Tom Dooley Service Fellow at the Sister Maura Brannick, C.S.C., Health Center, a free clinic serving uninsured members of the South Bend community, where he became a certified Spanish medical interpreter. At Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, he built an interpreter training program that placed Spanish-speaking medical students at Loyola’s clinic for the uninsured. His classmates elected him to the Gold Humanism Honor Society, a recognition reserved for peers whom others would want caring for their own families.

Originally from Asheville, North Carolina, Carlson graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a major in science-preprofessional studies and a supplementary major in Spanish, and earned his M.D. and master’s in public health from Loyola University Chicago in 2022. He writes prose and poetry; his essay “A Pronouncement” received an honorable mention in Notre Dame Magazine‘s Young Alumni Essay Contest. He is married to Evelyn Bauman ’16, who inspires him every day.

Richard Clark, Ph.D., ’16

Major: Information Technology Management and Political Science

Driving scholarship on globalization, international finance, and climate change in global institutions

HOOK
Richard Clark ’16 — Associate professor of political science at Notre Dame and author of Cooperative Complexity (Cambridge, 2025), whose award-winning research on international institutions and climate finance reaches from top journals to Foreign Affairs and The Washington Post.

Now teaching where he once studied, Richard Clark, Ph.D., ’16, is an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, concurrent with the Keough School of Global Affairs, and director of the Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise, and Society. Clark is an affiliate of the O’Brien Notre Dame International Security Center, the Pulte Institute for Global Development, and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. His research and teaching interests include globalization, international finance, and climate change.

Clark is the author of Cooperative Complexity: The Next Level of Global Economic Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and, with Allison Carnegie, Global Governance Under Fire: How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave (Princeton University Press, 2026). His scholarly contributions have been published in leading academic outlets such as the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, International Organization, and World Politics. He has also provided commentary for outlets like the Brookings Institution, Devex, Foreign Affairs, and The Washington Post, with coverage in Nature Climate Change.

Clark’s research has been recognized with various awards, including the Best Dissertation award from the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) International Collaboration section, the Midwest Political Science Association’s Best Paper in International Relations award, the International Studies Association’s Lawrence S. Finkelstein Prize, and the Best Paper award from the Women, Gender, and Politics Research section at APSA. Before coming to Notre Dame, Clark taught at Cornell University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University.

Clark received his bachelor’s in information technology management and political science from the University of Notre Dame in 2016, and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 2021, where he also earned his M.A. and M.Phil. As an undergraduate he lived in Keenan Hall and played on the club golf team. Originally from Youngstown, Ohio, he is an avid golfer and Cleveland sports fan, and he lives in South Bend.

Lt. Thomas Yaeger Jr. ’18

Major: Honors Mathematics and Economics

Committing to service that extends well beyond a career in uniform

HOOK
Thomas Yaeger ’18 — Naval Reserve submarine officer and law student whose service spans leading Catholic worship at sea, recovering millions in owed pay for enlisted sailors, and pro bono legal work to free the wrongfully convicted.

Lieutenant Thomas Yaeger Jr. ’18 is a nuclear submarine officer in the U.S. Navy Reserves and a third-year law student at the University of Chicago Law School, where he is an articles editor of the Law Review. His service to others extends well beyond his career in uniform. Since graduating from Notre Dame in 2018, he has served in the Navy eight years—seven on active duty and one in the reserves. As a reservist, he supports Naval Forces Europe and Africa as a planning officer, drafting contingency plans for the region.

On active duty, Lt. Yaeger first served as assistant engineer aboard the USS Alexandria in San Diego, overseeing day-to-day operations of a nuclear engineering department of more than 30 sailors through two high-intensity Western Pacific deployments. In 2022, he was named the ship’s Junior Officer of the Year. He then moved to Washington, DC, to pursue policy work as a staff officer at Naval Reactors, where he ranked first among 16 junior officers, and spearheaded development of the enlisted manning structure for the trilateral AUKUS partnership.

Despite moving five times since graduation, Lt. Yaeger has each time quickly found his new church community and gotten involved through different means in each city, whether teaching Sunday school alongside his wife, volunteering at a soup kitchen, or ministering to the homeless. He volunteers with Service to School, mentoring sailors interested in pursuing higher education, and works in the exoneration clinic at the University of Chicago, helping those who have been wrongfully convicted. As a summer associate at Sidley Austin he has also filed VA disability appeals on behalf of service members.

Being a graduate of Our Lady’s University is an integral part of Lt. Yaeger’s identity. He graduated in 2018 with a bachelor of arts in honors mathematics and economics, earning a Bernoulli Award honorable mention for his thesis on the effect of the financial crisis on the anchoring of inflation. He lived in Duncan Hall and was a member of the Sailing Club and Navy ROTC. Notre Dame is a significant part of his family life: his son was baptized at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart this past fall, with two Notre Dame graduates as godparents and Rev. Noah Junge, C.S.C., ’18, ’24 M.Div., a friend and fellow classmate, presiding.

Shannon Gaylord ’17

Major: Psychology
Minor: Education, Schooling, and Society

Bringing lived experience to a disorder few providers are trained to treat

HOOK
Shannon Gaylord ’17 — Licensed mental health professional and one of the few clinicians in her state specializing in Functional Neurological Disorder, now guiding clients toward regaining functionality in daily life.

Treating a condition that most clinicians have never been trained to recognize, Shannon Gaylord ’17 is an outpatient therapist in North Carolina who specializes in Functional Neurological Disorder (FND). FND is a neurological condition that affects how the brain and body send and receive signals. Finding treatment for FND can be challenging due to a lack of awareness about the condition and a shortage of trained providers around the world.

As one of the few providers in North Carolina specializing in FND therapy, Shannon helps her clients better understand their diagnosis, manage their symptoms, and work toward regaining functionality in their daily lives. Her own lived experience with FND brings a unique perspective to her work while helping her clients navigate the challenges of the disorder.

Shannon also serves on FND Hope’s Research Collective and educates other health care providers about FND in order to help affected individuals reach a diagnosis and find treatment quicker. A licensed clinical social worker and licensed clinical addiction specialist, she helps clients with neurological disorders, chronic pain and illness, anxiety, PTSD, and substance use disorders. She is happy to speak with psychology students interested in becoming mental health therapists and therapists interested in starting private practices.

Shannon graduated magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 2017 with a bachelor of arts in psychology and a minor in education, schooling, and society, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the Psi Chi honor society. She lived in Cavanaugh Hall and danced with the Notre Dame-Saint Mary’s Irish Dance Team. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her master’s in social work. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband and newborn daughter, and in her free time she can be found birding across her beautiful home state.

Jennifer Flanagan ’18

Major: International Economics–French
Minor: Peace Studies

Creating encounters between people who would otherwise never meet

HOOK
Jennifer Flanagan ’18 — Former executive director of RocaNews, a news platform she grew to more than 5 million young readers, and a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum ambassador whose Sardari Project carries survivors’ stories to young audiences inside Iran. She now works in media and communications in Paris following an MBA from INSEAD.

Jennifer Flanagan ’18 has built a career creating encounters between people who would otherwise never meet. She has lived in four countries across three continents and visited over 50, and much of that traces back to one decision Notre Dame made when she was a sophomore: the Nanovic Institute for European Studies sent a student who loved France but had little experience abroad to live with a host family in the French countryside. Nanovic later funded an internship in Ireland, hired her as a student assistant, and invited her back as an alumna on its advisory board. She has spent her career creating opportunities for others to have the same chance.

Flanagan carried that work to Washington, DC, as a French-language intelligence analyst at Booz Allen Hamilton and as a trained docent and ambassador at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she leads tours of the Permanent Exhibition and contributes to the Sardari Project with IranWire, a Persian-language Holocaust education initiative reaching young audiences inside Iran.

She then became the first employee of RocaNews, founded by two 2018 classmates, and spent three years as executive director building it into a major news platform for younger readers curious about countries and perspectives beyond their own. She grew the audience to more than five million, built the flagship newsletter reaching over 225,000 readers, expanded the team from four to 11, helped raise $4.5 million, and negotiated platform relationships with Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and Google.

In 2024 Flanagan returned to France for an MBA at INSEAD. Today, based in Paris, she works with Political Tours founder Nicholas Wood, a former New York Times and BBC journalist, designing small-group journeys led by reporters on the ground, and works under her own name on media and communications projects connecting the U.S. and Europe, including recent work for Miso.ai, which builds AI tools for publishers. 

Flanagan graduated from Notre Dame in 2018 with a bachelor of arts in international economics with a concentration in French and a minor in peace studies. She lived in Breen-Phillips Hall, and was president and coach of the women’s lacrosse club. Her favorite part of Notre Dame is sharing it—with her dad and role model, a ’76 alumnus who played lacrosse at Notre Dame and came to Paris’s first-ever lacrosse tournament to watch her play.

Madelyn G. Kennedy ’17

Major: Computer Science

Offering a soft landing for families in need

HOOK
Madelyn Kennedy ’17 — Engineering manager and driving force behind Safe Families for Children in Chicago, opening her own home to eight children and mobilizing her parish to keep vulnerable families together—truly living her faith.

Described all her life as a do-er and a natural leader, Madelyn G. Kennedy ’17 finds a way to make a solution happen when she sees a need. As a recent graduate in Chicago, she felt a strong call to be a foster parent—much sooner in life than she had expected—and did serious research looking for excuses not to. She assumed she would be too young, or that she could not because she was still renting, or because she was still single. None of those excuses held up, so she looked into how to make it happen, and during that process discovered Safe Families for Children.

Safe Families is a nonprofit that provides volunteer respite childcare for families experiencing poverty and crisis situations. It is not foster care: it is voluntary, meaning the families reach out and ask for help, and children stay with trained and vetted host families for only short durations until their parents are back on their feet. Kennedy’s friends and community all thought she was pretty nuts, but she applied to become a host family anyway. Over the last five years she has hosted eight children—the first five on her own, the most recent three with her husband in their new home. She calls it a wild, trauma-informed journey of ups and downs, and by far the most deeply meaningful community involvement she has ever had.

Kennedy’s professional life runs on the same instinct. She started as a technical consultant for two years, then moved into the booming tech world of SaaS products as a backend software engineer and was promoted into engineering leadership. In 2025 she pivoted into small-business restaurant technology, and is now an engineering manager at SpotOn. She loves managing software engineers and building high-performing teams.

Kennedy graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2017 with a bachelor of science in computer science. Her four years in the marching band had a huge impact on her college experience, bringing invaluable lifelong friendships, a strong community, and many travel opportunities; she also played in the hockey band and the orchestra. She lived in Badin Hall, where Sr. Denise Lyon, her rector for the first half of her time there, was an incredible advocate for her. She lives in Chicago with her husband.

Andrew Halt ’17

Major: Civil Engineering

Bringing technical rigor and creative strategies to civic problem-solving

HOOK
Andrew Halt ’17 — Senior city planner in Cincinnati who led a landmark zoning overhaul and won a $2 million HUD grant to make housing attainable, bringing technical rigor and creative strategies to civic problem-solving.

Bringing technical rigor and creative strategies to civic problem-solving, Andrew Halt ’17 is a senior city planner at the Cincinnati Department of City Planning and Engagement, where he leads efforts to improve housing attainability, establish neighborhood plans, and review proposed developments. Since joining the City in December 2022, Halt has taken on complex planning initiatives at a time when the city faced one of the steepest rent increases in the nation.

Halt served as project manager for Connected Communities, a landmark zoning code rewrite approved by City Council that expanded housing options citywide and was one of the most significant zoning changes in Cincinnati’s history. He brought novel engagement strategies to the effort, including Simcinnati, an interactive game he developed to teach residents zoning fundamentals while gathering input on neighborhood growth, which is now used by municipalities nationwide. For this work, Halt and his colleagues received the 2025 APA Ohio Best in Practice in Innovation Award.

Halt currently leads BuildReady, a $2 million HUD-funded initiative providing free, pre-approved building plans for small-scale “missing middle” housing to help local builders bring two- to four-unit developments to fruition. The initiative pairs process improvements with a unique form of engagement: residents will vote on designs submitted by architects through a design competition to shape the city’s official pattern book of free designs. Halt has also led Madisonville’s first neighborhood plan and presented on zoning reform at the David J. Allor Cincinnati Planning and Zoning Workshop and the ICMA Conference. In 2025 he received the City Manager’s Excellence in Service Award for leading complex, sometimes controversial projects with creativity and community commitment.

Before Cincinnati, Halt worked as a transportation engineer at AECOM in Philadelphia. He earned his civil engineering degree from Notre Dame in 2017 and master’s from Temple University in 2021. He is a certified planner and a licensed professional engineer in Pennsylvania and Ohio; at Notre Dame he lived in Zahm Hall and served as president of the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Outside of work, Halt is co-chair of the Urban Land Institute’s Young Leaders Group, helps lead the Notre Dame Club of Cincinnati’s young alumni group, and volunteers with the club at St. Francis Seraph Ministries. He enjoys cycling, pickleball, watching the Philadelphia Eagles, and exploring Cincinnati’s criminally underrated food scene.

Adam Henderson ’16

Major: Political Science

Litigating for veterans in an area of the law he has long been passionate about

HOOK
Adam Henderson ’16 — Yale-trained lawyer and Fulbright scholar who helped file Monk v. United States, alleging decades of racial discrimination in the VA’s administration of veterans’ disability benefits, and who continues to litigate the case today.

An attorney whose pro bono practice focuses on veterans issues, an area of the law he has been passionate about for years, Adam Henderson ’16 works in Chicago on high-stakes litigation matters for commercial and individual clients.

While at Yale Law School, Henderson helped file Monk v. United States, a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs alleging decades of racial discrimination in the administration of veterans’ disability benefits. The litigation was based on data, obtained through public records requests, showing a statistically significant difference in benefits claims outcomes for veterans based on race. Working through Yale’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic, Henderson co-wrote the complaint, the response to the motion to dismiss, and multiple discovery documents; the case garnered national news coverage including in the Washington Post, CNN, and NBC News. He continues his work on this litigation today.

Henderson has also been involved in helping numerous other veterans, including victims of the radioactive contamination related to a B-52 crash in Palomares, Spain—for whom he co-wrote a Federal Circuit brief arguing for class certification. Prior to law school, he worked on numerous political campaigns at all levels, including presidential campaigns, statewide governor’s races, and state house races. He also completed a Fulbright grant in Malaysia, where he taught English to hundreds of students in the town of Bachok.

Henderson graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 2016 with a bachelor of arts in political science, winning the John Roos Prize for the best thesis in American politics, and earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 2023, where he received the Stephen J. Massey Prize for outstanding clinical work and community service. He then clerked for Judge John Z. Lee on the Seventh Circuit. 

At Notre Dame he was a proud resident of Keough Hall—Go, ’Roos!—and a member of the marching band, where he served as section leader of the trumpet section. As a diehard sports fan, his band membership let him experience great Notre Dame sports moments, including an appearance in the BCS National Championship game after the undefeated 2012 regular season, and the basketball team’s 2015 ACC Tournament victory, where the Irish beat both Duke and North Carolina en route to the championship.

Rev. Brian Vetter, C.S.C., ’17, ’23 M.Div., ’25 M.Ed.

Degrees: B.S. in Science-Preprofessional Studies and Theology, minor in Anthropology; M.Div. ’23; M.Ed. ’25

Building relationships with young people in the classroom and helping them know the love of Christ

HOOK
Brian Vetter (B.S. ’17, M.Div. ’23, M.Ed. ’25) — Priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross who teaches middle school science and religion at a Spanish-speaking parish school in South Bend as an Alliance for Catholic Education Teaching Fellow.

Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Rev. Brian Vetter, C.S.C., ’17, ’23 M.Div., ’25 M.Ed., started his freshman year at Notre Dame in August 2013 planning to become a doctor, but along the way began to feel a call to religious life. He found his calling to join religious life in Holy Cross because of the profound sense of community he experienced in Alumni Hall and the faithful witness of many Holy Cross priests on campus, especially his rector, Rev. George Rozum, C.S.C., ’61, ’80 MSA. He entered Moreau Seminary immediately after graduation.

During his time in seminary, Fr. Vetter experienced a call to teach in secondary education and to minister particularly in Spanish-speaking communities. He has felt a passion to teach at the middle school and high school levels because of the opportunities the classroom provides to build relationships with young people and help them to know the love of Jesus Christ in their life. After his theology studies he entered Notre Dame’s ACE Teaching Fellows program and professed final vows in the Congregation of Holy Cross in August 2023, when he was ordained a deacon. In April 2024 he was ordained a priest.

Since August 2023, Fr. Vetter has taught full time at St. Adalbert in South Bend, a Catholic school run by the Congregation of Holy Cross that serves primarily first- and second-generation Mexican and other Latin American immigrants. Now beginning his fourth year there, he teaches sixth, seventh, and eighth grade science and religion, serves as middle school team leader, coaches girls’ volleyball, and runs tutoring sessions. He also assists in the parish with Masses, confessions, and other parish activities as associate pastor of Sts. Casimir and Adalbert, presiding at two to three Masses each Sunday in Spanish and English.

Fr. Vetter earned his bachelor of science in 2017, double majoring in science-preprofessional studies and theology with a minor in anthropology, followed by a master of divinity in 2023 and a master of education through ACE in 2025. He lived in Alumni Hall for four years as a resident assistant, and later served as assistant rector of Baumer Hall. During formation he spent a summer in a Spanish-speaking Holy Cross community in Monterrey, Mexico, assisting at the diocesan migration center and helping migrants apply for asylum. He is glad to speak with students discerning religious life and priesthood.

Liz Hynes ’17

Major: Film, Television, and Theatre

Writing comedy in New York and standing with the writers who make it

HOOK
Liz Hynes ’17 — Five-time Emmy-winning writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and a Writers Guild of America East councilmember who held that leadership post throughout the historic 2023 WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike.

A writer based in and in love with New York City, Liz Hynes ’17 came up through New York’s late night comedy scene, working as an intern and assistant at shows like The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, The Chris Gethard Show, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where she was a writers’ assistant. She joined the writing staff of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in 2020, where she says she will stay until either she is fired or the president learns who John Oliver is.

Her work on the show has been recognized with five Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series, won every year from 2021 through 2025, along with Writers Guild Awards for comedy/variety series in 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026, and a Peabody Award. Hynes has also proudly served as a councilmember of the Writers Guild of America East since 2021, maintaining this leadership position throughout the 2023 WGA/SAG-AFTRA labor strike.

When she is not writing for money, she is writing for fun: she publishes the Substack Abolish Everything!; has written on Edith Piaf and AI for Notre Dame Magazine; on CBS cancelling The Late Show for Vanity Fair; and an interview with the musician AURORA for Imagine5. She is especially eager to connect with low-income students pursuing careers in entertainment—if you are not born wealthy and/or in or next to New York or LA, she says, you are at an extreme disadvantage, and she would love to help balance those scales.

Hynes graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2017 with a bachelor of arts in film, television, and theatre. She lived in Ryan Hall and was involved in FTT and the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, Student Standups, and Scholastic magazine. She is also a classically trained pianist, but don’t ask her to play; she’s rusty.

Brandon Ruggles ’17

Major: Finance

A people-first leader building strong teams and developing future leaders

HOOK
Brandon Ruggles ’17 — Chief operating officer of OIA Global, leading 1,300 employees across 60 locations with a people-first leadership style centered on building strong teams, fostering transparent cultures, and developing future leaders.

Known for a people-first leadership style centered on building strong teams, fostering transparent cultures, developing future leaders, and driving sustainable growth, Brandon Ruggles ’17 serves as chief operating officer of OIA Global, a global supply chain solutions company, leading 1,300 employees across 60 locations. He grew up in the Chicago suburbs as the oldest of five children, and was elevated to the COO role in 2025 following record performance leading the company’s supply chain management division.

Ruggles has built and transformed business units ranging from startups and mid-market companies to Fortune 500 enterprises. Before becoming COO, he led OIA’s supply chain management division, accelerating the segment’s growth, strengthening critical customer partnerships, and meaningfully improving employee engagement and retention. Leading that roughly $1 billion segment, he reduced voluntary turnover from 28 percent to 5 percent, earned top performance on all 12 employee engagement score metrics, lifted segment EBITDA by roughly 40 percent, and moved the business’s Net Promoter Score from -3 to +69 in 12 months.

Earlier in his career, Ruggles held roles at Booz Allen Hamilton and Lacy Diversified Industries, where he helped lead multiple business transformations to improve profitability while establishing the processes, organizational structures, and operating disciplines needed to support long-term growth; one global transformation project he led generated $100 million in equity value based on third-party analysis. While at Notre Dame, he co-founded Dark Horse Sports Recruiting, helping more than 250 student-athletes attend college and earn over $65 million in scholarship offers.

A magna cum laude graduate of the Mendoza College of Business with a bachelor of business administration in finance, Ruggles is a proud St. Edward’s Hall alumnus who served as a resident assistant and vice president of hall government. He also played four years of Bookstore Basketball and interhall basketball. He lives in Chicago, where he previously sat on the board of the city’s Notre Dame Club, with his wife and two young daughters he is working hard to raise as diehard Notre Dame football and Chicago Cubs fans.

Dr. Beverly Kyalwazi ’17

Major: Biology

Expanding equitable access to liver transplantation and care

HOOK
Dr. Beverly Kyalwazi ’17 — Physician and UCLA gastroenterology fellow whose research and advocacy expand equitable access to liver transplantation and address disparities across the liver transplant continuum.

Shaped by growing up in a family that experienced financial hardship and barriers to health care, Dr. Beverly Kyalwazi ’17 carries a lasting understanding of how health care systems can both heal and exclude—an understanding that shapes her commitment to advancing health equity. She is a gastroenterology fellow at UCLA and a scholar in the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program, where she is pursuing a master’s degree in health policy and management.

As an aspiring transplant hepatologist, Kyalwazi is dedicated to conducting health services research that identifies and addresses disparities affecting patients with chronic liver disease. Her work focuses on integrating patient perspectives and lived experiences to develop patient-centered interventions that improve access to care, health care delivery, and outcomes for individuals with advanced liver disease. She is particularly committed to expanding equitable access to liver transplantation and addressing disparities across the liver transplant continuum.

During her internal medicine residency at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Kyalwazi researched how often patients view potentially abnormal liver cancer screening results before a provider has reviewed and communicated them, and what that does to patients and to the patient-provider relationship. As a fourth-year medical student she received the Calvin Fentress Fellowship, presenting breast cancer research at the annual Senior Scientific Symposium, and she was awarded a Kaiser Permanente Northern California Scholarship for her demonstrated commitment to underserved communities.

Kyalwazi graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2017 with a bachelor of science in biology and earned her M.D. from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in 2022, completing the university’s Graduate Program in Health Administration and Policy alongside it. As an undergraduate she received a Nanovic Institute grant to study contract negotiations between the British Medical Association and the National Health Service in London. She lived in Lyons Hall and was involved in the Minority/Multicultural Pre-Med Society, the Biological Sciences Senior Leadership Committee, the Voices of Faith Gospel Choir, and the Building Bridges Mentor Society. She also volunteered at the Robinson Community Learning Center and the South Bend Center for Hospice Care, and traveled to Appalachia on a Center for Social Concerns fall break rural immersion. She is eager to connect with students pursuing health sciences, particularly those who identify as underrepresented in medicine.