Caryssa Lim, a 2024 Pisacano Scholar, is currently a 4th-year medical student at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. She graduated from University of Chicago with a degree in Biological Sciences and Human Rights. In 2016, she returned to her hometown of Los Angeles, to pursue a Master of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she studied Community Health Sciences. Growing up in a largely Indonesian community of older adults, Caryssa can still be found spending her nights and weekends sharing stories and food.

At the University of Chicago, Caryssa learned about the power of communities – in the small ways that Chicagoans will help their neighbors shovel snow away from a buried car, and in the big ways that entire neighborhoods will mourn over the loss of a community member. It was this revelation that we are deeply connected to one another that she decided to study public health.

While at UCLA, Caryssa became deeply interested in the intersection of health, nutrition, and food justice. As a UCLA Global Food Initiative Fellow, she studied the individual and community effects of school and community gardens in Los Angeles. She helped run a middle school garden program that empowered local students to better understand their community’s relationship to food and nutrition, including food deserts and targeted advertising. At UCLA, Caryssa led public health efforts to connect individuals experiencing homelessness to local resources, which reinforced to her the deep flaws in our health care system, particularly for those who do not have the resources to advocate for themselves. S also worked as a teaching associate for several undergraduate public health and biological sciences courses.

After receiving her MPH, Caryssa worked as a Project Manager and Business Consultant at the newly established Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine (KPSOM). She was drawn to this work of using education to train physician advocates, compassionate healers, and visionaries who would one day transform our health care system. She never would have imagined that she would be a part of the first class of medical students at KPSOM. During her time as a student at KPSOM, Caryssa served as chair of the Student Curricular Board and member of the Inclusive Curriculum Task Force, continuing her passion for developing equitable, socially accountable medical education curricula. She took her passion for education and equity to the national level and served as the Student Representative to the Society of Teachers for Family Medicine Board of Directors from 2022-2024.

In addition to her passion for transforming and improving medical education, Caryssa continues to work on research and community projects related to improving our health care and social systems to better serve patients and communities. Between her third and fourth years of medical school, Caryssa spent a year working as a research coordinator for a community-based project that aimed to study a scalable model for adverse childhood experiences screening and intervention.

As a future family physician, Caryssa believes firmly that medicine is an act of individual compassion and a tool for social justice. In all she does, she hopes to bring with her a deep humility and an unrelenting pursuit to fight for what is right and just for individuals, families, and communities. In her free time, you can find Caryssa hosting book clubs in her apartment, running near any body of water, and cooking hearty meals for her family and friends.