Phil Garrity

After graduating from UCLA in 2010, Phil Garrity spent a year volunteering in Peru before joining Partners In Health, a non-profit organization that works to strengthen health systems in poor communities worldwide. On the verge of beginning medical school in 2012, he withdrew his acceptance, sensing a desire to delve deeper than the mechanics of disease and instead explore the experience of illness. A few short weeks later, he would be diagnosed with a rare bone cancer and begin a nine-month chemotherapy regimen and surgery. Throughout his journey as both patient and healer, he remained engrossed in the deeply existential, philosophical, and spiritual questions surrounding what it means to be human. Now cancer-free, he is preparing to begin a Masters of Divinity degree program and continue exploring the interplay of spirituality, suffering, and service. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Ghost in the Machine: A Spiritual Memoir at Twenty-Five.