Ka Yi Li (Kiki) was born in Hong Kong. At the age of twelve, her family immigrated to Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. Growing up in a working class environment, Kiki witnesses firsthand her non-English speaking parents face significant barriers to access health care services. She was inspired to pursue medicine and made a resolute mission to serve the most vulnerable communities in the United States and abroad. She attended Temple University for undergraduate studies where she obtained a major in Biology and a minor in Spanish.
As an AmeriCorps member, she taught English as a Second Language at a Chinese Senior Center. Meanwhile, she deepened her language fluency in Spanish and French while volunteering in Panama and studying in France, respectively. For medical school, she attended Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, New Jersey. There, she coordinated two Latino Policy Summits with medical students across the country. Next, she completed her residency training in Family Medicine at Boston Medical Center, where she cofounded a residency curriculum in “Immigrant and Refugee Health.”
Through HEAL fellowship, she strives to advocate for the health and human rights of immigrants and refugees in the United States. In her free time, she enjoys singing karaoke, playing video games, dancing salsa and outdoors hiking on short trails.