“Emory is a truly collaborative community, one that celebrates shared success and consistently encourages giving back.”
Riya Goel, 2026 Doctor of Medicine (MD) candidate, Emory School of Medicine, was born in Austin, Texas, but considers Palo Alto home. She spent much of her childhood zigzagging across the map, living in Colorado, the San Francisco Bay area and India. As a high schooler, she mentored elementary and middle school students. Mentoring was her first taste of what would become a lifelong appetite for teaching. She enrolled at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, majoring in human biology. While biology and chemistry sparked her curiosity, she acknowledges, “I wasn't sure if the pathways of regulatory science or bench research were right for me.” However, she remembered the joy she felt teaching and started organizing health education outreach events, eventually becoming president of the peer-to-peer mental health organization TrojanSupport. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in human biology in 2020.
Early travels instilled Riya with a unique perspective on health care. “At Emory, I found countless opportunities to explore the effect one’s environment has on their health, and how environmental inequity plays a huge role in outcomes.” Riya served as the president of the Medical Students for Climate Action. As president, she produced heat illness guidance for patients and providers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition to presenting nationally on improvements to climate and health curricula, Riya helped bring “Ride for Their Lives,” an international cycling event to raise awareness about the harms of air pollution on health, to Emory. In 2024, the Emory Office of Sustainability Initiatives recognized her with a Sustainability Innovator Award.
“I envision my role as a physician to be teaching and working in collaboration with my future patients,” Riya reflects. Her mission was solidified while teaching sexual and public health to high school students as a mentor and curriculum coordinator for the Emory Pipeline Collaborative. During one of those sessions, a student slipped her an anonymous question, asking, “My boyfriend wants to have sex and insists, even when I don't want to. Am I allowed to say no?” After explaining that the option to say no is always a person’s right, Riya understood that a physician’s duty involves more than offering medical knowledge. It’s about “restoring agency to those who may feel powerless in their own bodies.”
Riya was attracted to gynecology and obstetrics because it allowed her to embrace her talents as an educator, advocate and public speaker. “I would not have been able to pursue this passion without Emory's support.” She cites the influence of School of Medicine faculty members, such as Lisa Flowers (gynecology and obstetrics) and Rebecca Philipsborn (pediatrics), in championing her success. One of her clinical contributions includes expanding the electronic medical record to improve anal cancer screening at the Ponce de Leon Center Clinical Research Site. To accomplish this feat, Riya collaborated with physicians and staff at an HIV primary care center in Atlanta. She successfully conducted several research projects, including exploring the impacts of seasonal flooding on pregnant women and children in Makassar, Indonesia.
On Match Day 2026, Riya Goel will learn where she will continue her training in gynecology and obstetrics. No matter where her career leads next, Emory has left a lasting imprint on her life. “I am grateful to have trained in an environment where caring for underserved populations is a shared priority.” While here, she met her partner, Samuel Stresemann M3 and “formed friendships and professional relationships that I will carry with me for life.”
She adds, “I am beyond excited to see where the next step in my journey takes me.”
During Match Day Riya learned she matched at the University of California Los Angeles in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
