As a young boy, Erick Martinez was enamored with doctors in their white coats and medical instruments in the exam room when he went to the doctor with his mom. He went on to study neurobiology at Harvard University and graduated in 2015. Martinez graduated as a medical doctor from Augusta University in Georgia in 2021.
Martinez comes from a family of farmworkers in South Georgia, who made a living from picking produce in the tomato fields there. Marciela and Loreto, Martinez’s parents, came to the US from Tejupilco de Hidalgo in central Mexico in the mid-1980’s. Both parents grew up in poverty and were forced to drop out of school at an early age to help support their family. They crossed the Rio Grande into the US and landed jobs picking produce in North Carolina. They then moved to South Florida, where they picked oranges, before landing in Decatur County, Georgia.
The Martinez family lived in a small house with their first two children, Raul and Erick, with other farmworker families. They had no air conditioning, making the summer months brutal. This is where the other two of Erick’s siblings were born.
Martinez’s second grade teacher decided to test him to find out his academic level and revealed that he was a “gifted” student. He was later admitted in a program that brought gifted students together to take advanced classes every week. He attended vacation academic programs at prestigious institutions such as Duke University and graduated from Bainbridge High School in Georgia as the first Hispanic valedictorian in the school’s history.
After graduating with honors, Martinez applied to several prestigious academic institutions including West Point Military Academy and Harvard University. He was accepted into both institutions, making his family proud of his academic accomplishments.
West Point was Martinez’s next destination, but he would only attend for a year. After learning about the death of his good friend in a car accident, he dropped out. Coping and grieving made it difficult to focus on his studies, but he reapplied to Harvard where he was accepted for a second time and began his studies in neurobiology in the fall of 2011.
After graduating from Harvard, he enrolled at Augusta University where he completed his medical degree in May 2021. Martinez is continuing his studies in neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and thanks his parents for providing him with the opportunity to succeed.
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