Essex County is home for Antoine Saint-Victor, born in Newark and raised in East Orange.
“I went to Seton Hall Prep. From there I graduated and went to Cornell University in upstate New York. I worked in health tech for about three years in Boston, and now I’m here,” he said.
Saint-Victor is the first member of his family to graduate from college but working in medicine runs in his family.
“My grandmother at a time, she was a nurse. My mom works here at University Hospital and also Beth Israel for 30 years. She’s an x-ray technician. It’s funny, when I was a kid seeing her pick me up in pre-k and she was wearing scrubs kind of made me think that my mother is working in a hospital, my grandmother too, maybe there’s something to this medicine thing,” he said.
Antoine has a vision of doing work outside of the examination room at the New Jersey Medical School. With an eye on aiding the homeless population in Essex County.
“Growing up here, you understand, I guess, what being homeless is when you’re a kid. But sometimes it’s kind of the norm,” he said. “Going away to Ithaca, then Boston, now coming back here with a more refined perspective of the world, I realize that it’s not normal and it’s an issue that needs to be addressed. It’s a detriment to healthcare and people’s health.”
Antoine Saint-Victor is one of only 178 students chosen to be a part of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School’s Class of 2023.
“It’s an amazing feeling. A super humbling feeling. You think about this for years. You go through different challenges to prepare. You go through school, put extra time into activities, make sacrifices, and sometimes you even lose touch with people. It’s really nice to see all of your hard work recognized by this great institution and now I get to come back home to do it.”