An aspiring primary care physician, Laurine Tiema-Benson has dedicated her life to working with marginalized populations. She has an array of diverse medical and public health experiences that position her to be a well-rounded future physician. Laurine’s desire to enter the medical field began while in high school after witnessing her mother near death. However, it was during her undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that her desire was solidified as she helped low-income residents become more self-sufficient via connecting them with resources to help build their skillset. Upon completing her degree, Laurine moved to Atlanta as an Americorps VISTA volunteer and later worked with an evaluation consultant firm to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors surrounding HIV/AIDS with residents of high-risk communities. While in graduate school at Emory University, Laurine served as the Director of Vision Screening for Unite for Sight and led eyeglass drives for the underserved worldwide. Years later, Laurine held many leadership roles including co-instructing science courses to low-income, first-generation high school students interested in medicine as a career. For over three years, Laurine regularly accompanied her physician mentor on home visits to the bed-ridden, home-bound, and people who had been recently released from prison. As a medical student at Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University, Laurine volunteered to deliver care to the disenfranchised via a mobile health vehicle and community health fairs. Additionally, during her last three years of medical school, she worked on a United Health Foundation and National Medical Fellowships service-learning project to assess and address barriers and improve outreach and health service utilization in the local African American community. She is currently an Equity and Justice Lab Research & Primary Care Fellowship at Wayne State University, a mentor to numerous premedical and medical students, and a group facilitator and instructor for the I Am Abel Foundation and the health careers pipeline program in Chicago. In honor of her dedication to community service and scholastic achievements, while in medical school Laurine attained numerous scholarships, and inductions into the esteemed Gold Humanism Honor Society and the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Honor Society.

Laurine obtained her MD degree from Chicago Medical School, Master of Public Health degree from Emory University, and Bachelor of Science degree in Community Health from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently married to Dr. Perry Benson, Jr., a college professor, and resides in the Milwaukee, WI area.