32-year-old makes $122,000 a year in health care—without going to med school: ‘My career is really high impact'

This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.

Lauren Perraut has “always been drawn to blood, body parts, gross things,” she says.

The 32-year-old’s mom worked as a medical laboratory scientist at a blood bank for decades before retiring. Perraut would visit her mother’s lab as a kid and see those elemental parts of the body up close.

She liked “seeing things that most people don’t get to see,” she says.

That’s why when it came time to forge her own career path, Perraut opted to become a pathologists’ assistant. Pathologists diagnose medical conditions by observing patient specimens in a lab. As a PA, Perraut dissects organs and tests body tissue to prep them for the pathologist, and helps come up with a patient’s diagnosis.