I didn’t grow up thinking I’d be a doctor—well, not a medical one, at least. I always knew I loved science, but also…philosophy. And art. And spirituality. Turns out, psychiatry is a fantastic field if you just love understanding and living life, because the nature of what it means to be alive and human is the undercurrent of everything we do.

I took a bit of a circuitous path to medicine, first by going to West Point, and then by choosing to study French and Human Geography. After graduating, I flew helicopters for the Army and deployed overseas twice, and while I was home I finished premed classes at Kansas State University, near where I was stationed with the Army.

I went to Harvard for medical school, and got to do research in Ghana, climb Mount Kilimanjaro and, by good fortune, do a psychiatry rotation at one of the best psychiatric hospitals in the world—I was sold.