The calling to become a doctor came early for Marquita Genies. According to a family tale, as a 4-year-old, she hopped on the bed one day and announced, “Grandma, God told me to become a doctor!”

Today, Genies traces that instinct to watching her grandmother, who raised her in Washington, D.C., cope with physical disabilities — undergoing surgeries and bringing the child with her to frequent doctor’s appointments and physical therapy sessions. For Genies, it clicked that helping people in this way was something she wanted to do.

But she had no roadmap to access the medical field. 

“My grandmother didn’t have a high school diploma, no one in my family was in medicine,” she says. “I didn’t know what it looked like.”

To get to where she is now — serving as a pediatric hospitalist, and as an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine — Genies relied on mentors who nurtured her ambitions.

“I had teachers who would take me to science fairs, take me on college trips on their own time,” she recalls. 

After finishing a general academic fellowship at Johns Hopkins, then joining the faculty in 2016, Genies immediately prioritized becoming a mentor herself — and an advocate. Among her efforts, she’s steered programs at The Johns Hopkins Children’s Center to support students and trainees from groups traditionally marginalized from medicine, including people of color, those in the LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities.

Earlier this year, Genies extended her reach with her appointment as the school of medicine’s assistant dean for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) for graduate medical education and postdoctoral affairs.

The inaugural position builds on momentum from Genies’ past work, which included creation of the peer mentoring structure in the Harriet Lane Pediatric Residency Program, which matches students from underrepresented groups with trainees and faculty members from similar backgrounds.  

“One thing that’s often a huge barrier to getting historically marginalized trainees interested in working at a place like Hopkins is the trainees trying to figure out, ‘Is this a place where I’ll belong? Is this a place where I’ll be supported and fit in?’” Genies says. “So how do we give students a taste or look of what that will be like?”

As associate program director of the Harriet Lane program, Genies has helped draw a more diverse pool of visiting students to Johns Hopkins — by upping face time at recruitment fairs, hosting more open houses and strengthening relationships with historically Black colleges and universities. When she first started this work, she says, only 9% of Johns Hopkins pediatric residents were from underrepresented groups. Three years later, the percentage was 25%. 

Genies hopes to see more — if not all — residency training programs across Johns Hopkins embrace similar structures for visiting students.

“I think it’s showed us something in pediatrics, that it’s truly integral and does make a difference preparing some of the best underrepresented students for our institution,” she says.

Genies is also committed to raising awareness across Johns Hopkins on health inequities and how they impact patient care and outcomes. Racism, Medicine and Our Community, a virtual training session she developed, won her a 2021 Spotlight in Education honor from the Association of Pediatric Program Directors.

Genies says her advocacy and her clinical work as a pediatric hospitalist merge to achieve the same goals.

“I’m still passionate about working with my patients and families, and all the work I’m doing in diversity, equity and inclusion is rooted in that,” she says. “To provide the best care possible to as many people as possible, we need a more diverse workforce that’s better educated on health inequities and how to confront them. That’s what I’m reaching toward.”