Karolina Schantz was born in Champaign, Illinois. She recently received her Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan. During that time, Karolina also worked on projects in the fields of mental health and chronic disease, including helping to implement and evaluate mobile health programs for diabetes, hypertension and depression management at low resource health centers in La Paz and El Alto, Bolivia. She completed a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and psychology at Northwestern University. While at Northwestern, Karolina focused on the issues of national identity and immigration in Latin America and conducted ethnographic research in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Following her undergraduate studies, she worked for two years as an English teacher in Bogota, Colombia before returning to the United States.