Tatenda Makoni

Fellow

Tatenda Makoni is a writer, former medical student, and care activist originally from Zimbabwe, shaped by growing up in a place where care often arrived unevenly. Her understanding of medicine was influenced by the HIV epidemic, global health research, and witnessing both the presence and absence of attentive care.

After withdrawing from medical school due to systemic barriers in medical education, Tatenda began writing publicly about race, institutional silence, financial precarity, professionalism, and what patients are owed by the systems that train their future physicians. Her work asks how medicine can move beyond performance toward care that is structurally honest, materially attentive, and deeply human.