Citizen Alum Project: Meredith Ingram
Emily West
Meredith Ingram’s passion for medicine did not begin in Atlanta where she now works as a Physician’s Assistant for Atlanta Facial Plastics. Her true story of falling in love with creating change though medicine began after she graduated from Emory and decided to work as a medical missionary in northern India. Her stories from that year are raw and emotional filled with hope despite the unimaginable circumstances. After that year, Meredith partnered with Doctors
Without Borders has has since lived in Israel and Ghana. Ingram’s goal through these travels is educating people not only about these conditions, but educating the people who are living in them about what they can do prevent themselves from serious medical problems.
Meredith credits her father for inspiring her to create change though medicine. Her father who is a Nephrologist in LaGrange, Georgia where Ingram grew up is also very passionate about the influence and power medicine has over our world. She chuckles as she says, “I always knew I would follow in the footsteps” not knowing where this path would take her. She describes that her calling has taken her far beyond what she though was imaginable and that through this leap of faith she has been challenge to learn and grow.
The piece of advice Meredith was most influenced her during her time at Emory was an idea from a professor who challenged that a calling is not easily fulfilled or understood. Often people who create change do this in a radical lifestyle changing way. When asked about community involvement she describes finding a greater since of community than just those people around you, “taking on a global perspective” and finding things in common with people across the world that ever imagined. Meredith describes that finding common with people who seem to have nothing in common shows the true resilience of the human spirit and mind. That the bond between people often needs nothing but unconditional care and compassion for one another to create connections forming a sense of community.
When asked what advice she would give to others about community involvement,
Meredith challenges to find a career that makes you excited and to pursue it. As well as finding opportunities within you're field to make or create change. Meredith is a believer that a calling is not something to be taken lightly. That through her calling she has ben able to engage with people from completely different cultures teaching herself not only about the world, but learning about herself. “Large or small scale changes begins with radical thinking, your life doesn’t have to follow the typical path and once I had accepted this I truly began to understand my own purpose.”