She was born in Mexico and moved to Oakland,California when she was young. She attended college at UC Berkeley (studying abroad in Brazil for a year) and then moved across country to complete medical school at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She took two years off during medical school to complete an MPH at Harvard School of Public Health and then to conduct research on quality improvement efforts in HIV clinics in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania as part of the Fogarty International Clinical Scholars Program. After medical school, she completed Internal Medicine residency (SFPC) at UCSF. She stayed on for the Primary Care Research Fellowship at UCSF to pursue a career as a clinician-investigator. Her research and clinical interests lie in improving mental health services in primary care, especially for older patients with limited English proficiency.