Alejandra Quesada-Stoner hopes to eventually become the kind of doctor she never had as a kid growing up in Mexico or as a teenager in New Mexico and Colorado.

“The medical field hasn’t always been the kindest to my family,” Quesada-Stoner said.

In Mexico, Alejandra Quesada-Stoner and her mother and siblings only went to the doctor when someone was sick. Health care providers didn’t emphasize regular check-ups or preventative care. Although it was easier to see a physician with regularity in the U.S., Quesada-Stoner still struggled to find a doctor who she felt comfortable with.

“For people who are in larger bodies, the health care system can be especially fat-phobic and discriminatory,” Quesada-Stoner said. “Having those experiences, along with the experiences in Mexico, is what really brought it home for me — I want to be the kind of physician I never had.”

Graduating with honors this month as a biomedical sciences major with a concentration in anatomy and physiology, Quesada-Stoner is headed toward achieving that goal. What’s more, she intends to use her bilingual skills to help with another problem with the American health care system: a lack of Spanish speakers.

Quesada-Stoner witnessed this challenge firsthand during her sophomore and junior years while working as a pediatric care assistant at Lincoln Middle School in Fort Collins. Many of the students, Quesada-Stoner said, were just getting settled in the U.S. and had parents who were either mostly or entirely Spanish-speaking.

“The children are just constantly translating for their parents, constantly providing that service for them,” Quesada-Stoner said. “Having a health-care provider who can do some of that talking for them is really a relief to the children and to the parents.”

After graduation, Quesada-Stoner plans to study for the MCAT while continuing work with the Global Health Department at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Quesada-Stoner started with St. Jude’s last summer as an intern. Now, she’s continuing a project focused on improving what’s known as the pediatric early warning system — a model designed to identify patients with cancer who are at risk for clinical deterioration — specifically in Latin American hospitals with fewer resources.