A collection of features and graduate profiles covering Harvard’s 375th Commencement.
While growing up in Brazil, Luiza Lima Vieira recalls walking past children her age living on the streets of her native Sao Paulo and wondering why they went hungry and she did not.
Attempting to answer that question is what led Lima Vieira ultimately to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she earned a master’s of public health in nutrition in December — all while navigating health struggles of her own.
“I didn’t understand why I had access to food and other children my age didn’t, and that didn’t make sense in my head at the time,” Lima Vieira said. “Injustice was something that always shaped my path and I wanted to do something about that.”
Lima Vieira — whose family moved to Ithaca, New York, when she was 16 so her mother could pursue medical studies — credits a symposium she attended as an undergraduate at Cornell as the catalyst for her turn to public health.
