Srinivas Merugu

I am a 51 year old man originally from India, husband to a wonderful native Clevelander and father to a delightful 15 year old son. I am a primary care physician by training and have spent the past 25 years in Cleveland, doing a combination of clinical practice, hospital administration, teaching medical students and residents, and population health management. My work has been local, statewide and national, even though I've not lived outside Cleveland since the year 2000.

I grew up in India and went to medical school in Hyderabad, a large city in the Southern part of India. I arrived in America in the Fall of 1997 as a graduate student in genetics. I then went on to complete my medical training in Internal Medicine and settled in Cleveland. It had been my father's dream for me and my own childhood dream to come to America. My father saw America as a place of greater opportunity for a talented and motivated person like me and was convinced I would have a much better life here. He was not wrong. I have had nearly unimaginable good fortune in terms of the teachers, friends, resources, experiences and life I have had since moving here.

I fell in love with Cleveland very soon after arriving here in the year 2000. As I like to say, I've fallen in love three times - with the city and the Ohio City neighborhood (which has been home for 20 years), then my work (serving the Central neighborhood and now several communities in Cuyahoga County), and my wife Jessica, a native Clevelander, to whom I've been married for 18 years. I love the cultural diversity, all four seasons, the cultural institutions, the outdoors, the food scene, the great cost of living, and the grit of the people who choose to live here. I have made some of my most meaningful friends and life experiences in this city.