A typical day for Marine Corps veteran Thomson Maina used to begin with a 4:30 a.m. alarm, followed by a quick breakfast, conditioning session, and strenuous flight equipment maintenance work from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Though he now wakes up at 7 a.m., Maina has found a new challenge at Georgia Tech as he pursues biomedical engineering with the hope of improving medical equipment availability for treating and diagnosing complex illnesses.
“It’s a different kind of tough here,” he said. “I am challenged every day. I don’t take anything here for granted, being surrounded by great minds making great advancements. It’s through this environment that I get to think deeply about bringing medical solutions to my home country and other communities with limited access to medical devices.”
Roots in Kenya, a Mission Beyond
Maina was born in Kisumu, Kenya. His mother was an English teacher, and his father was a businessman who sold tires.
When Maina was a young teenager, his mother became mysteriously ill. Doctors began trying to help Maina’s mother with the tools they had available, but she continued to grow sicker. After exhausting a litany of other diagnoses and treatments, she was ultimately diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.
After diagnosis, Maina’s mother traveled to India for treatment since medical options in Kenya were sparse. Unfortunately, the treatment proved futile, and Maina’s mother passed away when he was just 14 years old.
To this day, Maina cites this experience as a major motivating force that inspires his pursuit of biomedical engineering. He loves his home country and wants to equip doctors with better resources so that other families don’t go through what his did.
“By the time she got a proper diagnosis, the cancer was already at its late stages,” he said. “To add on to that, us living in a developing nation meant that we did not have the proper equipment and facilities to treat cancer at the time. I hope to improve the availability of advanced medical devices in low-income communities, especially in developing nations. This will hopefully improve the proper diagnosis for complex illnesses and make the hospitals in these communities more equipped to treat these illnesses.”
Coming to the United States, Joining the Marines
Two years after his mother passed, Maina’s father moved the family to the United States.
By the time he landed in St. Louis, Missouri, Maina had graduated with his high school diploma and began looking at his options for college before quickly being discouraged by the price tag.
“I didn’t know about loans at that time, though I don’t know if that would have changed my decision — it was just more money than I could fathom,” he said.
Despite the sticker shock, Maina was set on attending college and pursuing his goal to help others. So, he began work as a nursing assistant while he researched alternative pathways to pay for college.
After hearing that the military would cover college costs, Maina visited a recruiting office, but the initial conversation didn’t go anywhere after Maina realized that he did not qualify for the kind of service he wanted to pursue.
However, on the morning of New Year’s Day of 2019, Maina received a call from the recruiter that he was now eligible. Maina left for basic training less than a week later.
Over the course of the next year, Maina learned how to perform his duties as an aviation mechanic, eventually moving to a quality assurance manager position and then supervisor of the flight equipment department.
During his time as supervisor, Maina found one of his favorite parts of the Marine Corps: being a good manager.
“I learned a lot about how to be a good supervisor and build an environment where people enjoy the work they’re doing,” said Maina. “Creating that community was the most fun part for me.”
As he advanced through his positions, he also received clearance to attend night classes at Coastal Carolina Community College. It was through conversations with his classmates that he learned about biomedical engineering and found Georgia Tech.
Georgia Tech: a Dream Turned Reality
As Maina approached the end of his military contact, he submitted an application to be a transfer student at Tech. He assumed he wouldn’t get in, but thought the process would be beneficial for his personal and professional development.
Unknown to Maina, though, he qualified for the Veterans Transfer Pathway Program — a unique track for transfer students who have completed military service and meet outlined requirements.
“I remember it was Friday evening, and I checked my email,” said Maina. “When I saw that acceptance letter, my mind was blown. You know, you see people get into prestigious colleges on TV or in movies, but I never thought that would happen to me. It was never in the realm of possibility until I was reading my acceptance letter.”
While Maina’s undergraduate coursework is happening later than he initially planned, he’s thankful that his time in the military gave him a sense of commitment and maturity that has paid off.
“The military taught me a lot about what it means to actually be committed to something, what that looks like,” he said. “And I certainly wouldn’t be here at Georgia Tech without it.”
To learn more about transfer admission at Georgia Tech, visit the website.