User talk:DurimMorina

Ilirjan Gjonbalaj

A May 2012 graduate of the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter and a biochemistry major, has won a Fulbright award to teach in Kosovo. He will be teaching English to high school students.

The son of Albanian immigrants from Montenegro who settled in the Bronx, Ilirjan Gjonbalaj is the first in his family to graduate from college. His widowed mother works as a hotel housekeeper and in the evenings, both mother and son work the coat-check at The Metropolitan Opera.

During his four years at Hunter, Gjonbalaj volunteered with Peer Health Exchange, a nonprofit that trains college students to teach health workshops at public high schools that would otherwise lack health education. During his senior year, he trained and led Hunter’s group of 68 Peer Health volunteers. He spent the winter break of his senior year in Salvador, Brazil, working for CAASAH, an organization that provides housing and other assistance to children and teenagers born with HIV. His plans for Kosovo include supplementary work teaching health.

From an early age, he set his sights on a healing profession. “My career goal is to be a pediatrician,” he said. “I’ve always known what I wanted to do.” Gjonbalaj will apply to medical school this summer, and hopes to begin his studies upon his return from Kosovo. We are sure that Ilirjan Gjonbalaj i'ts going to be an amazing doctor.