Photo by Ann Hermes

South of the border: “Both sides of my family are from northern Mexico; my mom’s side is from Hermosillo, Sonora, just a four- or five-hour drive from Tucson.”

On the beat: “I was captain of the drumline in my high school marching band and played in the jazz band with my friends. We were always making music in our free time.”

Bioengineering 101: “At Stanford, one of my professors posed a question: Which organism would we synthesize to learn what’s hidden in its genome? I picked this six-legged organism called a tardigrade that can go into a state of cryptobiosis for decades when the water it lives in dries up.”

Fieldwork: “I learned how to collect, isolate, and grow tardigrades, but we didn’t get as far as sequencing them. I did publish an online guide to finding them in your own backyard that reached a wide general audience; it taught me the power of clear communication and telling a story with your research.”

Close to home: “My interest in women’s health comes from my mom’s experience with endometriosis—she went through IVF to have me—and, at the other end of the spectrum, people I know who had to seek abortion care for unplanned pregnancies. In both cases, having access to care provided agency.”

Why HBS: “I worked in a lab after college; the goal was to build things to help people, and we did develop an early screening device for ovarian cancer. But any device needs to be commercialized to exist on the market. And I knew nothing about that part.”

But first: “I came to Boston for Harvard Medical School’s HealthTech Fellowship—a 10-month program grounded in business, science, and engineering. My first exposure to HBS was through Tom Eisenmann’s course Tech Venture Immersion. That’s where my mind was really blown. I knew I had to be here.”

Group effort: In November, Cordova and classmate Christina Vosbikian organized the inaugural Women’s Health Summit, including speakers like Jannine Versi (MBA 2014), cofounder and CEO of Elektra Health, and Laura Mackay (MBA 2014), president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Direct.

Pass it on: “By this spring, I will have been a teaching fellow for five different courses at Harvard. I also help teach a medical device innovation program for underrepresented high school students at Brooke High School in Boston.”

Must read: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, by Caroline Criado Perez

Must eat: “Tucson has so many unique dishes. One is called a Sonoran hot dog. It’s a hot dog wrapped in bacon, in a bolillo roll, with pinto beans, pico de gallo, mayo, mustard … all the toppings.”

Backyard farmer: “My girlfriend and I had chickens in Arizona and hope to again at some point. When you hand raise a chicken, you form a connection, and they become the loveliest little pets. They also give you delicious eggs.”

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