Our Adult & Pediatric Clinic Coordinators manage the UCSF Human Rights Collaborative monthly clinic operations and handle clinic-related email/phone correspondence with our legal, community, and clinical partners. These Coordinators interface directly with clients and evaluators. These roles are especially great for students interested in clinic or program operations and leadership.
Ivy Tran
Adult Clinic Coordinator
Ivy Tran (she/they) is a first-year medical student at UCSF. She was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she grew up listening to stories from her parents about their childhoods in Vietnam and their experiences as refugees during the war. Later moving to the east coast, Ivy graduated with a BA in Evolutionary Biology and a minor in Studio Arts from Harvard College. Her interest in the intersection between humanities, story-telling, and advocacy led her to holistic and narrative medicine. She is excited to draw from these interdisciplinary experiences and bring her passion for refugee health to the Human Rights Collaborative.
Shivany Y. Condor Montes
Adult Clinic Coordinator
Shivany is a first-year medical student at UCSF. She grew up in a small town cradled by the Peruvian Andes named San Pedro de Cajas. At age 10, she immigrated to the United States alongside her family, seeking and being granted asylum. With the many new education opportunities, Shivany to explored various fields as she tried to make sense of her community's experience in the face of unjust social and structural systems at the U.S. and Global levels. She explored political science and education, finding her passion in the interplay of public health and medicine. Shivany received a B.A. in Molecular Cell Biology, and a B.A. in Public Health, alongside an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley. Given her personal experience with immigration and past work in community and advocacy work, she is ecstatic to join the HRC team as the Adult Clinic Co-Coordinator.
Kaitlyn Crowley
Pediatric Clinic Coordinator
Kaitlyn Crowley (she/her) is a first-year medical student at UCSF from Thousand Oaks, California. She graduated in 2023 from Rice University in Houston, TX, where she studied Sports Medicine and Exercise Physiology, Sociology, and Medical Humanities. Kaitlyn is passionate about the intersections of law and medicine as well as understanding child protective service agencies and advocating for child welfare. Her work in these sectors and involvement in emergency department social work has led her to the Human Rights Collaborative, where she is excited to serve as the pediatric clinic co-coordinator alongside the rest of the HRC team.
Sapna Ramappa
Pediatric Clinic Coordinator
Sapna Ramappa (she/her) is currently a first-year medical student at UCSF. She grew up in San Jose, California, and received her bachelor's degree in Human Biology and Society from UCLA. Prior to medical school, she volunteered with UCLA's Mobile Clinic Project to serve unhoused communities in Los Angeles, conducted autism research at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and advocated for increased medicine accessibility with Universities Allied for Essential Medicines. Sapna is excited to serve with the UCSF Human Rights Collaborative as the pediatric clinic co-coordinator and bridge her interests in trauma informed care and health policy.
Our Adult & Pediatric Clinic Support attend monthly clinics to support clinic coordinators and in-clinic operation. They work closely with clinic coordinators to facilitate clinic organization and implementation, including: setting up cases in REDCap; requesting interpreters; requesting shadowers; requesting care team referral sheets.
Daniel Luis Zager
Adult Clinic Support
Daniel Luis Zager (pronouns: he/they) is a first-year medical student at UCSF. He grew up in Philadelphia, PA before graduating from Georgetown University with a degree in Justice and Peace Studies. Daniel wrote their senior thesis on the Sanctuary Movement in Washington, DC and has spent time organizing with immigrant communities to stop deportations and overhaul the US immigration system. Between graduating college and starting medical school, Daniel worked as a labor organizer in Chicago. Daniel brings to HRC a passion for community organizing and social justice and is excited to support Bay Area immigrant communities as the Adult Clinic Support.
Riya Master
Pediatric Clinic Support
Riya Master is a first-year medical student at UCSF. Riya grew up in the Washington DC area before moving to the Bay Area for undergrad. During her time at UC Berkeley, she pursued a degree in Integrative Biology and research in social medicine. Riya is passionate about global health equity and has worked in both clinical and academic spaces on migrant and refugee health. She is interested in a career in pediatrics and hope to advance human rights through medicine and advocacy for communities in need.
Our Adult & Pediatric Care Team Coordinators support the connection with a client after they are seen at HRC, by providing 3 follow up phone calls within 6 months during which they screen for social needs and provide referrals to community resources using a survey in REDCap. The Care Team Coordinators lead this program.
Samar Shaqour
Adult Care Team Coordinator
Samar Shaqour is a first-year medical student at UCSF, from Miami, Florida. She graduated from Tufts University in 2021 with a major in Biopsychology and a minor in English. Her personal and family experiences with the immigration system sparked a passion for and commitment to health equity for immigrant populations. She also has extensive experience in free clinic work, community outreach, and research in health disparities. She hopes to draw from these experiences to contribute meaningfully to the Human Rights Collaborative.
Austine Peng
Pediatric Care Coordinator
Austine (she/they) is first year medical student at UCSF. They grew up in Springfield, IL, Taoyuan, Taiwan, and Reno, Nevada. Austine graduated from UC Berkeley majoring in Public Health and Molecular and Cell Biology with a minor in Global Poverty and Practice. They spent the last five years working in grassroots community organizing with folks experiencing homelessness in the East Bay, serving as Executive Director at organizations like the Suitcase Clinic, and co-founding the Berkeley Outreach Coalition. Most recently, Austine worked as a Community Health Worker and Intensive Case Manager for people experiencing homelessness in downtown Oakland through Lifelong TRUST, coordinating care and working with clients to eliminate barriers to health. They are excited to join HRC continue to serve their community and honor the lived experiences of their ancestors immigrating to America and seeking refuge in other parts of the world.
Our Referral Coordinator is responsible for operating as the liaison between the HRC and law offices/community organizations representing HRC clients. The referral coordinator manages referrals and select cases with the support of HRC faculty, and then connect closely with clinic coordinators to hand off cases for scheduling in the HRC. This coordinator will read and review client declarations which can require significant exposure to trauma.
Mahika Nayak
Referral Coordinator
Mahika Nayak (she/her) is a first year UCSF medical student from Pleasanton, California. She graduated from UCLA in 2022 with a major in Neuroscience and a double minor in Global Health and South Asian Studies. Throughout her time at UCLA, Mahika was involved with increasing accessibility to culturally-sensitive mental healthcare resources, on and off campus, for marginalized sectors of the South Asian population. After graduation, Mahika worked at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities Service in NYC where she organized community health fairs for the taxi driver population to provide them with linguistically and culturally responsive healthcare resources, insurance navigation, and case management. She is passionate about health equity and hopes to continue advocating for immigrant communities
Our Affidavit Coordinators ensure that affidavits are completed and submitted to attorney before deadlines and track outcomes of cases that have been seen by HRC.
Melat Birbo
Affidavit Coordinator
Melat Birbo is a first-year UCSF medical student from San Jose, California. She graduated from Stanford University in 2019 with a B.S. in Bioengineering. Her previous experiences include volunteering at Highland Hospital, where she helped underserved patients navigate obtaining government benefits from social welfare programs. She is passionate about health equity and addressing social determinants of health. Melat is excited to continue serving immigrant communities alongside the HRC team.
Mandy Quan
Affidavit Coordinator
Mandy Quan is a first-year UCSF medical student from Boston. During her undergraduate training at Rice in sociocultural anthropology and gender & sexuality studies, she conducted ethnographic research on the role of humanitarian clinics in shaping the social memory of the Rohingya Refugee Crisis. She became interested in the role of medicine in facilitating political relationships and collaborated with directors of Columbia’s Human Rights and Asylum Clinic to create a narrative competency toolkit for medical affidavit writing during her Master’s training. Mandy is passionate about legal-medical partnerships and continues to work at a disability law firm today. She believes in medical affidavit writing as a way of asserting the personhood of those systemically erased.
Our Research Coordinator maintains and updates IRB training and amendments to current IRB ensuring study personnel are added and up-to-date with training and modifying application to include new study aims.
Nebyou Mergia
Research Coordinator
Nebyou Mergia (he/him) is a first-year medical student at UC San Francisco School of Medicine. He graduated from Northeastern University where he studied Biology, Public Health, and Gender Studies. Nebyou is very passionate about health equity and rebuilding trust in medicine within historically underserved communities. In the past, he worked as a health educator for under-resourced Boston public schools and youth homeless shelters. His experiences impressed the importance of using the legal system to address the systemic issues in our healthcare. Nebyou's personal and professional experiences drew him to join the Human Rights Collaborative as the Legal Coordinator for 2023-2024.
Our Training Coordinator serves as the liaison between the HRC and the clinicians who perform asylum forensic evaluations, and the students who attend the elective. Overall, this role involves recruitment, training, support and consultation for our HRC evaluators, and to catalyze long term engagement for all students in the elective.
Ifechukwu Okeke
Training Coordinator
Ifechukwu Okeke is a first year MD/PhD student at UCSF. Prior to UCSF, they studied neurobiology at UC Berkeley as community college transfer student after immigrating to the US at 16, from Lagos, Nigeria where they were born and raised. Current and past immigration case proceedings for them and various close friends and family members have been laced throughout their educational journey since arriving in the US and these first hand experiences are what inspired their interest in the UCSF HRC. They are familiar with the very real and sometimes devastating effects that numerous unfavorable changes in immigration laws based on decisions made by lawmakers have on people’s day-to-day lives and ability to survive or have basic needs met. Unfortunately these effects go unnoticed by majority of people in society unless they are or work directly with migrants or immigrants, or are affected in other ways. Ifechukwu is involved in this work because the population of people the clinic serves are in dire need due to systems in place which they often times have no control over, but experience the ways in which it is set up to fail them quite often. They are currently working on a rainbow knit slipper, having learned to knit two weeks ago, and are focused on intentionally creating space for themselves to understand what it means to be a healer and to heal themselves too, amidst a culture where being a physician currently usually equals chronic exhaustion.