Amplify Womxn of UCI: Hearing Our Stories
Elizabeth Yi, MPH, MBA, was born in Seoul, South Korea, immigrating with her parents and two siblings to Orange County in 1982, initially setting in Santa Ana then moving to Orange in 1987. She attended public schools in the Orange Unified School District, from first grade through high school, serving as Student Body President at Villa Park High School and representing her school at California Girls’ State. She was accepted to all UC campuses she applied for and declined a full scholarship to UCI in Biological Sciences to attend UC Berkeley, where majored in French Literature and pre-med coursework. She spent all four years serving the homeless and underserved community in Berkeley as a coordinator and trainer for the Suitcase Clinic, a student-run free medical and social services clinic.
After university, she joined the United States Peace Corps in Bénin, West Africa as a Rural Community Development and Health Education volunteer, working in maternal child healthcare, education in nutrition, family planning, and HIV, along with coordinating Bénin Peace Corps’ annual “Women in Development” national events to promote girls’ education. Shortly after returning to the US, Elizabeth joined the UCSF Francis I. Proctor Foundation to conduct and coordinate international eye disease eradication research and population-based clinic trials in Nepal, India, and Ethiopia. Elizabeth completed her MPH and MBA dual degree at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School in 2007 and returned to Orange and worked at CHOC Children’s as the Clinical Research Site Manager and then as Research Administrator of pediatric clinical trials and basic science/translational research. She joined UCI Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology as Division Administrator in 2012 and has been in this position for well over eight years, serving clinical and research faculty, academics, advanced practice providers and clinical fellows