Highlights: Engaging with diverse communities across three continents has given Ned an appreciation for the complexity of human experience while fostering a passion for social justice and health equity. As an undergraduate in New Haven, Ned pursued a combination of ethnographic research and outreach work that sought to understand the lived reality of homelessness as he accompanied men and women who fell between the cracks of the social welfare system. After graduating, Ned spent a year living in Tanzania working with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare designing and implementing cervical cancer screening and treatment programs. During this period, Ned had the opportunity to live in the outskirts of a Tanzanian slum and ethnographically study the experience of social marginalization. Following his year in Tanzania, Ned started an MPhil in Medical Anthropology, where he is writing a dissertation that explores the interface between the social and biological frameworks for conceptualizing 'mental illness' in India. Leading up to this research, Ned spent three months in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh working with Sangath, an NGO, on a research project that is developing evidence to determine the most effective methods for offering mental health care services in resource poor settings. Moving forward, Ned's aspiration is to split his time between America and India as a physician-anthropologist professor living a purpose driven life that links scholarship and service.