Chris Gruber

At 28, newly minted physician Chris Gruber has seen more suffering than some doctors encounter in a lifetime. He spent 2001 in Nicaragua setting up programs for orphaned and abandoned children, many with substance-abuse problems.

“That’s absolutely the hardest thing I’ve ever done – being a parent to 60 kids. That was much harder than medical school,” says the 2005 Keck School graduate.

His Nicaraguan experiences were a template for programs he later developed in Haiti. Between terms at med school, Gruber was a public health worker in Mexico, Costa Rica and the Caribbean. In spring 2005, he did a five-week rotation at a hospital in Tanzania, seeing as many as 35 patients a day at the height of the malaria season.

“In the 30 years I’ve worked here,” says Keck School administrator Althea Alexander, “he is the most well-rounded medical student I’ve had the opportunity to work with. He really is one of those people who belongs to the world.”