Cover Feature
Joanna Soltis Ultimately, discovered all roads really did lead to home... And she couldn’t be happier. — By Elyse Hawkins—
Simply Hers, Cover Article, Joanna Soltis [I haven’t had any brilliant headline inspirations yet!] by Elyse Hawkins Things don’t always go as planned and this was the case for Joanna Soltis. Ten years ago, it was Joanna’s dream to complete a Ph.D. program in forensic anthropology. Fast forward to now, and she is a physician assistant (PA) working with Karim HealthCare and happily serving both the Hillsdale and the Cement City communities.
“I did a 180,” Joanna explains. The road to where she is now was rocky, but Joanna says she feels so blessed to have ended up where she was meant to be all along. “I can form relationships in medicine. There was no chance for that in forensics.” Originally from Jackson, Michigan, Joanna got her undergraduate degree at Central Michigan University. She then decided to head to Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas, where she obtained her first master’s degree in forensic anthropology and even had the opportunity to spend time in Poland doing research that eventually formed the basis of her thesis. After completing graduate school, Joanna applied to eight different Ph.D. programs, hoping to continue her education in the field of forensics. Out of the eight programs, there were only three students accepted and Joanna was not one of them. This took Joanna’s life in an unexpected direction when she was faced with the question of what to do next. “I had to figure out what else I wanted to do with my life,” Joanna says. She has always loved to travel, but at this point in her life, her family ties drew her back to Michigan. After much deliberation, Joanna resolved to go into preventive care and pursue a second master’s degree at the University of Detroit Mercy and become a board-certified physician assistant. Joanna explained that the journey to what was her ultimate career in medicine was very frustrating at times, but she would do it over again.
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