Lucy Marcil

Growing up in South Carolina, Lucy Marcil was exposed early on to social, economic and racial inequities. “From a very young age, I struggled with these injustices on a visceral level,” she says.

As an undergraduate, Marcil traveled to Denmark to write her senior thesis on psychosocial factors affecting the duration of breastfeeding. This initial brush with public health became the first of many experiences that would lead toward her current desire to improve mother-child health care in underserved populations. Later, Marcil joined the Peace Corps and worked in Namibia with people affected by HIV/AIDS. There, she developed an after-school program for orphans, taught a women’s health class at a prison and ran a youth leadership camp.

“My experience living in Namibia profoundly impacted my life,” says Marcil. “It made me see that a career as a doctor, alone, would not be enough.”

Marcil eventually sees herself working as a family medicine doctor at a health center serving North Carolina’s immigrant populations and focusing on maternal-child health care.