Kenji Fujita

I am a 1994 Quincy alumnus, which seems alternatively like either ancient history of just yesterday. I went straight to medical school at the Harvard-MIT HST program. I flirted with the idea of doing a PhD but ended up doing an HHMI research year instead. After medical school, I took the first real risk in my life, going into consulting at McKinsey, rather than residency. This 2 year experience taught me how much I had taken for granted about the importance of doing meaningful work that directly helps patients, so I did a U turn and did internal medicine residency and cardiology followship at Columbia. I have spent my post-training career at a variety of companies developing novel therapies for patients in need. I am currently the chief medical officer at Atsena Therapeutics, a small private company that develops gene therapies for the eye. I still see patients one weekend a month at Rutgers.

I live in NJ with 1 wife, 3 kids (ages 17, 14, and 6), 2 dogs, 2 cats, and 6 chickens. I enjoy karate, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, SCUBA, hunting, and fishing.

I think it's really important for premed students to appreciate the vast array of career paths that medical school opens, so I'm always happy to talk about unconventional paths, like my own!