Author: Cecilia Cruz MD

Cecilia Cruz, MD, MPH is a board certified emergency physician with over twenty years of clinical practice experience that began in academic institutions, but has predominantly taken place in a hybrid community medical system. Dr. Cruz was born and raised in the Chicagoland area to two immigrant parents, a Colombian mother and a Cuban father. She attended Northwestern University as an undergrad and obtained her medical degree at University of Illinois Chicago, where she also completed her emergency medicine residency. After residency, she went to Johns Hopkins University to complete an International Emergency Medicine Fellowship and a Masters in Public Health. A couple of months after completing her MPH, Dr. Cruz gave birth to her first son, and since then had three additional children. She, her husband, and their four children all now live in Glenview, a north suburb of Chicago. In 2018 she was diagnosed with breast cancer that had spread to her axillary lymph nodes and required the full gamut of chemo, surgery, and radiation. Although that was a very challenging time, it gave Dr. Cruz the opportunity to pause and reexamine her life, her values, and her dreams. While undergoing treatment for her cancer, Dr. Cruz came across Life Coaching, and it opened her life to possibilities she had not ever imagined, or at least not for a long time. She felt called to pursue training in the field because she wanted to create an invitation for others to experience life as fully as she was now aware it could be experienced. Dr. Cruz continues to work clinically on a part-time basis, but also runs her life coaching business, MARPE, LLC. Her passion is to work with clients who are facing difficult circumstances or transitions, feel stuck in their situation and can’t seem to find a path out, are seeking guidance on how they can engage with life in a more fulfilling way, and are committed to the process of learning a new way of being. Her special focus is working with acute care physicians who fit the bill. You can find out more about Dr. Cruz on her website: http://www.marpejourney.com.