Maike van Niekerk

Maike van Niekerk, from Corner Brook, Canada, is pursuing an MD at Stanford School of Medicine. Maike earned a bachelor’s degree in cancer-focused nursing at Dalhousie University, and a PhD in Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. Maike aspires to improve healthcare access for underserved communities by pioneering holistic treatment programs combining insights from medicine, psychiatry, and nursing to improve care for diverse patient populations globally. At Oxford, she helped manage one of the largest psychiatry trials ever conducted, and she implemented psychological support programs in prisons and detention centers across the United Kingdom. She founded Katrin’s Karepackage, a nonprofit in memory of her mom that has offset the travel costs of hundreds of cancer patients living in rural communities in Canada. Currently, she works as a consultant for the World Health Organization and a spin instructor. Maike is a Rhodes Scholar and Schulich Leader Scholar, and has been named one of Canada’s Top 20 Under 20 and Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women.