Jirayut “New” Latthivongskorn

New emigrated from Thailand to the United States’ San Francisco Bay Area when he was nine years old and is now a recent graduate from the University of California-Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Throughout college, he funded his education with part-time jobs and private scholarships while staying involved in groups such as the Thai Student Association, Resident Hall Assembly, and the AB540 Coalition on campus. Off-campus, he served as a first co-chair of ASPIRE (Asian Students Promoting Immigrant Rights through Education) at Asian Law Caucus, where he advocated and fought for the passage of the federal and the CA DREAM Act of recent years. As a New American Scholar of Educators for Fair Consideration, a non-profit organization supporting students in higher education, he shares his personal immigration experience to portray a different side of “DREAMers”. Most importantly, he continues to speak out as an Asian undocumented youth to increase visibility of API communities in immigration reform, reframe the public’s perception, and create a community for other API undocumented youth.

As an aspiring medical doctor who also hopes to pursue a Master’s degree in Public Health, New seeks to remedy the barriers that low-income and immigrant families of America face in accessing healthcare. His time volunteering with the homeless through the Suitcase Clinic and with Oakland’s low-income communities as a Healthy Ambassador of Mentoring in Medicine & Science exposed him to the stories of different communities, but also the struggles shared by all of them. His experience in scientific research includes two years at the School of Public Health at Cal studying the essential genes of the murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) and, most recently, a summer research fellowship in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medical College examining the kidney’s functions. New aims to become a physician who practices medicine through a public health lens, using primary care, research, and policy to shape health for the individual and the community. He has helped start Pre-Health Dreamers in hopes of alleviating the barriers he has faced for future undocumented students pursuing their dreams in the health and sciences.