As the son of Indian immigrants, Gaurav Gaiha, MD, DPhil, describes himself as wearing two hats. He was born in the U.S. and grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, outside of Chicago, which resulted in “a dual identity … at one moment you’re very much American, and then in the next moment you identify with your upbringing as an Indian,” he says.
Gaiha’s parents are originally from New Delhi; in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they immigrated to the U.S. for his father’s medical training and residency, a move that Gaiha calls “incredibly brave.” He credits them for being able to “usher themselves into a new world and find a way to assimilate with different values and a different way of doing things.”
Growing up in Lake Forest—a predominately white, generally affluent suburb—Gaiha says he never felt prejudice in any significant way other than a few “pinpoint moments” that he didn’t let get to him. “There was this general sense of being a bit different than my friends and classmates, but I didn’t think much of it. I think that was a really important lesson that my parents taught me, to simply adopt a mindset of, ‘You have this amazing opportunity to grow up in this wonderful country … just do your best and don’t worry about what people are going to say. That’s on them, that’s not on you,’” he says.
