Emily graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Biology. She was then awarded a Fulbright research grant in Kathmandu, Nepal for her ethnographic research examining how mothers of children with autism conceptualize the diagnosis and how it shapes their relationship to motherhood. She completed her PhD in the UCLA Department of Anthropology in 2023, studying trauma surgery, violence prevention, and policing in a Los Angeles County safety net hospital. 

Currently, she is a fourth year medical student applying to residency in general surgery, and aims to develop her career as a surgeon-anthropologist, applying critical insights into the broader social conditions that shape violent injury to advance the field of trauma surgery and design surgical systems that best serve the communities who most need them.