Meet One of Our Co-Founders: Kayla Gu

Kayla Gu, currently a 3rd year medical student at UCLA, is one of the founding members of LAHRI. When she and her colleague Simon Levinson were approached in their first year of medical school to lead this organization, she saw this as a valuable opportunity to pursue her passion in human rights. Kayla’s concern for human rights-related issues stems from her childhood. Unlike many of her peers who were similarly born in China during the one-child policy era, she has a younger sister. Thus, “human rights is always on my radar. I’m very interested in learning what outlets citizens have if their rights are not protected in their own countries,” she said. Kayla believes that UCLA is passionate about human rights, ethics and equality in medicine; but she realized that there was a void that could be filled by starting a clinic for asylum seekers. Thus, she considered the LAHRI to be a “particularly good niche for me to develop leadership, expand UCLA’s involvement in human rights, and further explore my interest in human rights and what I can do with medical experts in this field.” Together with Simon and a dedicated team of students, mentors and physicians, they have successfully scaled up the project – what began as an expression of interest by a small group of individuals became an officially registered organization in 2018, and their efforts culminated in a large-scale training held for approximately 200 people. 

The path to establishing LAHRI has not been easy, however. Beyond leadership and administrative obstacles, Kayla has found it difficult to critically examine misconceptions that people have about asylum seekers, such as the unfounded belief that asylum seekers are more prone to committing crime. A specific example was when faculty members asked her if asylum seekers pose a security threat to student volunteers, which reflects their stereotypical negative thinking towards this population. By doing this work, she feels challenged to “develop a sensitivity in human rights work to be able to articulate and point out implicit biases and be able to have constructive conversations with those who harbor those implicit biases.”

In addition to her leadership position, Kayla also takes on the role of a student volunteer. In this capacity, she has found every medical evaluation that she has assisted with to be memorable. Not only does each unique story motivate her to think of solutions to solve the injustices committed by countries, they also deepen her clinical understanding of how people cope with traumatic experiences. Although she initially responded to these stories with feelings of rage and indignancy, she now derives perseverance and persistence from them. Her advice on how to stay motivated? “Surround yourself with those who have conviction and enjoy this line of work, don’t burn out, and be close to the cause by really exposing yourself to the suffering of those people.”

-Evelyn Chan