ABOUT MARICELA BONILLA

Maricela Bonilla Gutierrez was born and raised in Cuba. “Through the eyes of a little girl raising a child in this society was very simple, or so I believed. 

Maricela Bonilla Gutierrez excelled in her rigorous entrance exams, which granted her admission to a prestigious pre-university school, where she studied for three years. She then successfully passed university entrance exams and embarked on a demanding six-year journey to earn her medical degree. Throughout her education, she was taught in a socialist system that emphasized equality and revolutionary ideals, though she observed that these principles were more theoretical than practical. 

After graduating from medical school with honors, Maricela Bonilla Gutierrez entered a postgraduate program that sent her to practice medicine for three years in Venezuela with communities in extreme poverty, where the low level of education made communication and understanding medical instructions very challenging. Upon returning to Cuba, she found that everything had become much more difficult, from minimum wages to the availability of food for children and the elderly. She then began a three-year residency in General Integral Medicine where she learned to work in medical emergencies with extremely limited resources, sometimes lacking even basic supplies. This experience made her feel that she was losing her ability to help her patients. After completing her residency her family in the United States extended a Humanitarian Parole to her, which was approved, allowing her to come to the U.S. Due to travel restrictions for medical professionals Maricela had to leave her country as if she were escaping. 

Once Marisela arrived to North Carolina the cultural transition was comparable to being a child again, learning things that even small children already knew. Maricela’s first job was in agriculture, picking cucumbers, where she felt hypnotized by them and struggled with the shift from a stethoscope to cucumbers, but did the job with dignity and gratitude.  

In 2023, Maricela was hired as the Mobile Clinic Coordinator for the Sembrando Salud Program,  in partnership with Campbell University. By the end of her first year in this role, she had successfully completed her Community Health Worker Certification. 

Maricela Bonilla Gutierrez feels deeply fulfilled as a professional at NC FIELD, where she has found a renewed connection to the medicine she studied. She is committed to continuing her growth within the organization, hoping to gradually advance and contribute even more to the important work they do.