Chelsea Gerlicki

Chelsea came from a family of service. Her grandfather served in the Navy during World War II, her father was a police officer. After graduating high school, she knew she also had to give back in some form and decided to follow her grandfather’s footsteps. Ever since she was a young girl, Chelsea was fascinated with medicine leading her to enlist as a hospital corpsman in 2010. She served as a corpsman for five years and specialized as a surgical technologist. During her enlistment, she assisted in over 20,000 surgeries.

In 2013, Chelsea deployed to Afghanistan to a small combat action support hospital made up of eight personnel. It was here where she finally discovered her right path. Unfortunately, there were quite a few mass casualties and never enough hands to care for all the wounded, especially considering her scope of practice. She realized that she had a deep passion for caring for the severely injured and wanted to do as much as she could to care for them. That meant only one solution, pursuing a medical degree.

During her time in undergrad, she spearheaded local health outreaches in colonias, economically disadvantaged communities along the border. Chelsea witnessed the disparities and horrible suffering of people that were in her hometown. Chelsea believes that healthcare is a fundamental human right. As a physician, Chelsea will practice with the utmost compassion and respect, and fight for every patients’ well being.