Born in Korea, Dana came to the United States at age eleven with her parents, who ran a retail store in Los Angeles. Her commitment to advocacy and medicine was sparked by her family's struggles to obtain healthcare as non-permanent residents.
Dana attended Wellesley College where she majored in neuroscience with a minor in women's studies and graduated summa cum laude. While in college, she worked in rural Guatemala, where she developed a passion for providing primary medical care for underserved communities and organized a program to train teenage girls as community health workers. Back in Massachusetts, she worked with the YWCA to start a student-faculty clinic that provides medical, mental health, and social needs screenings. She also worked with Partners in Health to expand a cervical cancer screening program in rural Guatemala.
As the University of Cambridge Overseas Scholar and Knafel Fellow, Dana received a master's degree in public health at the University of Cambridge. She graduated from Harvard University with a medical degree (MD) and a master's degree in public policy (MPP). She was a Gleitsman Fellow for Social Change at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she worked on integrating primary care physicians into the evolving health care system. Dana is now a first year resident in the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
