Niralee Shah, MD
Biography
Niralee is the daughter of first-generation immigrants and grew up in western MA. She studied Mathematics and Arabic at Williams College. After college, she taught math and co-curricular yoga at an international high school in Jordan, then moved to Palestine where she joined a tech startup and co-developed a mini-MBA program for youth entrepreneurs. She was then director of Tomorrow’s Youth Organization, a nonprofit community center in Nablus, Palestine supporting the education, health, and psychosocial well-being of families living in the area’s refugee camps and underserved urban neighborhoods. Working there compelled her to retrain in medicine to better understand and address the impact of early life and intergenerational trauma on the mind and body. After a premedical post-bacc, Niralee moved to Rhode Island and earned her M.D.-M.Sc. in Brown’s Primary Care-Population Medicine program, where she grew her love for teaching and interest in improving access to mental health care. She is a member of the Gold Humanism Honors Society and received the 2022 Christopher Benedick, MD, Child Psychiatry Award. As a resident, Niralee aspires to provide care that centers the strengths and stories of her patients and their communities. Outside of work, Niralee enjoys dancing, rock climbing, biking along the RI coast, and gathering the people she loves around food.