About Sara

Sara Sakowitz is a current medical student and aspiring surgeon at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She earned a Masters in Science at Boston University and a Masters in Public Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, where she was named to Delta Omega. Previously, she was the Founder and CEO of Blue Moon Box, a science education company.

As a medical student, Sara is an active member of the CORE Lab, where her work focuses on uncovering disparities in clinical and financial surgical outcomes. In the future, Sara hopes to continue combining her passions for medicine and public health by fighting cancer in the operating room and research lab. In the long term, she aspires to work to improve surgical outcomes across patients and hospital systems, develop new therapies and approaches, and work to expand communities’ access to and engagement with treatment.

Sara graduated from Columbia University in 2018; on campus, she was the President of the Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs (CORE), one of the university's largest undergraduate student societies. As CORE's first-ever female President in its 20-year history, Sara worked to champion entrepreneurship at Columbia and both create and expand opportunities and resources for young entrepreneurs on campus. 

Sara was named to Crains NY Business' 20 Under 20, the NYC Economic Development Corporation's 10 Under 20, and the Her Campus 22 Under 22. In 2016, she became the youngest-ever winner of Columbia University's Venture Competition; in 2018, she became the Competition's first-ever two-time winner. In addition to press features from the Huffington Post, Metro News, and others, Sara was featured on Good Morning America with Blue Moon Box, where she successfully pitched her enterprise to Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary.

Sara entered her first cancer research laboratory when she was 16, and has actively pursued research in cancer biology and cancer genetics ever since. She was a 2014 National Finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search, won the First Prize Grand Award in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, and won the National Made with Code Prize from Google and Ellen Degeneres. 

In her spare time, Sara loves learning languages and speaks German, French, Italian, and Spanish.