Success in Practice
Machon L'Parnasa Dean Braun was a beneficiary of former-student Hersko's hard work
Ethan Hersko hadn’t seen his former dean Esther Braun, since his undergraduate days at Machon L’Parnasa–Institute for Professional Studies. Until they came face to face one day in a hospital room. Hersko was doing rounds as a Physician Assistant in training and Braun was attending to her mother, who was suffering from pneumonia.
“She said, Ethan, Ethan, is that you?” recalled Hersko, 24. “She got choked-up. I was moved. She’s such a good person who works so hard for her students and shares her wealth of knowledge. I think seeing me in scrubs and a white jacket doing rounds was such a proud moment for her. I was one of the fruits of her labor.”
Hersko, a Brooklyn native who studied at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, found Machon L’Parnasa–Institute for Professional Studies perfect for his no-nonsense pragmatism. “I’ve never understood students who know what they want and still take their time,” he says. “I wanted to get in there, work hard, get what I need and get out in the world. That’s what I did.”
He went on to Touro’s Graduate School of Health Sciences and now works full time in an urgent care clinic in Baltimore, where he and a colleague see some 100 patients daily. Hersko did very well in school, but he says he wasn’t the best: “I met my wife, Adina, in school. She was way smarter than me.”
