Natura Mjeku

Mjeku leaves behind a war-laden life in Kosova to pursue her dreams of becoming an awardwinning doctor of molecular biology. 

Natura Mjeku always knew what she wanted to be when she grew up: a medical doctor. But when the conflict between the Serbian regime and Albanians in Kosova began to escalate, Mjeku’s goals were usurped by fear and survival. By the time she reached college, the atrocities of war advanced to her hometown of Prishtina, and the only choice her family had was to abandon their home and take refuge in Macedonia. “It was a life and death situation, literally. As a family, we had to do something, so we decided to leave Kosova in the first two weeks of NATO’s airstrikes against the Serbian forces,” says Mjeku. In 1999, she and her family again relocated, only this time to the United States as part of the refugee program.