About
The first thing most people want to know about a doctor is where they trained. That’s fair. The more interesting question is how they ended up there in the first place.
01 — Curiosity
My path to Family Medicine has taken me through film school, startup culture, Chinese martial arts training, adult summer camps, surgery, wilderness medicine, woodworking shops, climbing walls, and one very patient rescue dog from Taiwan.
At USC, I studied business and cinematic arts because I was fascinated by stories. Not fictional stories so much as real ones. Why people make the decisions they do. How communities form. How identity gets built.
02 — Camp Grounded
After college, those interests led me somewhere unexpected. Together with my brother Levi and a group of remarkably creative friends, I helped build Camp Grounded and Digital Detox, device-free retreats where adults stepped away from phones, work identities, and constant connectivity for a few days.
The idea sounds simple. The results were not.
People arrived exhausted. By the end of the weekend they were singing around campfires, making things with their hands, having difficult conversations, reconnecting with old dreams, and remembering parts of themselves that had been buried beneath calendars, deadlines, and notifications.
Long before I entered medicine, I found myself captivated by a question that would follow me for years: What helps people feel alive?
03 — Levi
That question became far more personal when my brother Levi was diagnosed with glioblastoma. Watching him move through surgeries, treatments, setbacks, difficult conversations, and eventually hospice changed what I noticed about healthcare.
I paid attention to the physicians who could explain complicated things clearly. The nurses who knew when to speak and when to sit quietly. The small acts of competence that created trust. The moments of presence that helped families carry impossible situations.
Medicine stopped being an abstract profession. It became deeply human.
04 — Surgery
Years later, I entered osteopathic medical school and eventually completed a preliminary year in General Surgery at UCSF East Bay in Oakland. Surgery taught me urgency, discipline, teamwork, and how to function when things become complicated very quickly.
It also clarified what I wanted most. I wanted continuity. I wanted relationships. I wanted to help people before they arrived in crisis.
05 — Family Medicine
Family Medicine felt less like changing directions and more like finally arriving at the place where all the pieces belonged.
Background
Interests
Values
Zev Felix, DO
