Like dad, Vietnam played a pivotal role for Vanessa Kerry

By Nikki Schwab, US News

Secretary of State John Kerry’s relationship with Vietnam is well known. He fought in the war there, only to return to the states to become a vocal anti-war veteran. His decorated service was questioned, “swiftboated” if you will, during his 2004 presidential campaign against President George W. Bush.

Vanessa Kerry, left, was inspired to start medical work globally after a visit to Vietnam where she first encountered true poverty.

“I was one of those really dorky kids that knew in third grade that I wanted to be a doctor,” she recently told a Washington audience. “I didn’t realize I wanted to do global health until I had a really unusual and extraordinary opportunity to go to Vietnam when I was 14, and I traveled with my father on a trip.”

It was there, in Vietnam, where Kerry first encountered true poverty.

“Then, after school, I had the chance to start working in some of these places and the images of things that I saw in Vietnam just got compounded by work in Ghana, work in Rwanda, work in Kenya, work in Tanzania, and it really sort of began to percolate,” she continued.

Kerry was inspired to continue to do medical work globally, she just needed to find the right partnerships, she said.

During her residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the almost-first daughter says she got “lucky.”

Read the full story by Nikki Schwab from U.S. News.