Today we’d like to introduce you to Larissa Assam.
Hi Larissa, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My journey into medicine began when I was seven years old. I knew that I wanted to help people, but after my father, who is also a physician, was involved in a nearly fatal car accident with limited access to critical care available in Cameroon, medicine became the avenue through which I desired to serve people. It became clear to me that I wanted to become a physician. I did not know it then, but this was the beginning of my calling.
I went on to become a Board-Certified Family Medicine Physician, earn my Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and complete my Family Medicine Residency training at Georgetown University-Washington Hospital Center.
Along the way, I have had the privilege of working across medicine, public health, entrepreneurship, and business strategy, including serving as a consultant with McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s leading management consulting firms. There, I worked on complex C-suite challenges for Fortune 500 companies and learned how some of the world’s leading organizations approach strategy, operations, transformation, and growth.
But some of my most important education did not come from medical school, residency, or the boardroom.
My story is also marked by a deeply personal journey of healing from sexual abuse that began when I was five years old, as well as profound loss, most notably, losing my grandmother and my mother. Those experiences forced me to confront pain, grief, faith, identity, and what it truly means to heal body, soul, and spirit.
Looking back, I realize that some of the things I thought I was simply surviving were actually preparing me to serve others.
Today, my work brings together medicine, inner healing, entrepreneurship, and ministry. I am passionate about helping people move beyond simply surviving or managing symptoms into genuine wholeness, and helping them understand that their story, their gifts, and even their painful experiences can be stewarded for a greater purpose.
I recently had the privilege of becoming an ordained minister at Kingdom Full Tabernacle International Ministries, and I see my work in medicine, ministry, and the marketplace as deeply connected. I believe God can use every part of our stories, including the painful parts, when they have been processed with wisdom and care, for His glory and to impact the world.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No.
Not at all.
It has been a road of experiencing tremendous grace and mercy from God, but it has not been a smooth one.
I have walked through sexual abuse, grief, loss, poverty, betrayal, addictions, disappointment, and seasons where I had to keep moving forward even when I did not understand what God was doing. Losing my grandmother and, more recently, my mother were particularly challenging experiences for me.
But today I am so grateful for these experiences because I have learned to see life and people differently because of those experiences.
One of the greatest lessons I have learned is that God does not waste pain.
I would never have chosen to experience most of the challenges I have endured in my life, but God has used them to deepen my compassion for others and to give me language for people who are walking through their own stories of pain, trauma, and restoration.
Genesis 50:20 has become deeply personal to me: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good.”
I have learned that what happened to me does not get to determine who I become. Pain does not have to become your identity. Losses do not have to be the end of your story.
In fact, some of the places where I was once most wounded have become some of the places from which I am now able to serve others most deeply.
That is one of the reasons I am so passionate about healing. I know what it means to need healing, not simply physically, but emotionally, spiritually, and at the level of identity within the soul.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
My work sits at the intersection of medicine, inner healing, entrepreneurship, and ministry.
I started my private practice, RopheMD, immediately after completing residency with no savings, and I am grateful that I have been able to keep it debt-free since its inception. That experience has deeply shaped how I think about healthcare entrepreneurship: I believe physicians can build excellent, profitable practices without compromising their values or taking on unnecessary debt.
As a physician, I specialize in five core areas:
– Onco-primary care (Direct primary care for cancer patients and survivors)
– Women’s health (preconception, pregnancy, postpartum, and beyond)
= Metabolic health (reversing chronic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes)
– Healing from sexual abuse and trauma, and
– Aesthetics (skin and scalp rejuvenation).
I have developed a whole-person approach to care that looks beyond a diagnosis to understand the biological, behavioral, emotional, and lifestyle factors influencing a person’s health.
I am particularly known for being focused on outcomes.
In my practice, I have seen patients achieve significant weight loss, an average of **10–15 pounds per month without weight-loss medications, along with meaningful metabolic improvements. One patient, for example, lost 20 pounds and was able to come off 64 units of insulin within 30 days, under medical supervision. I have also seen patients achieve significant improvements in blood pressure that have allowed for de-escalation of antihypertensive medications.
In my oncology work, I have supported patients through cancer journeys in which we have seen reductions in tumor burden, improvements in treatment-related symptoms, and clinical outcomes that have exceeded the timelines they were initially given.
In women’s health, I have been privileged to care for women with significant risk factors and see them experience healthy, complication-free pregnancies and births under appropriate medical supervision.
But some of the outcomes I am most passionate about cannot be captured by a laboratory value.
Through my work with women and men healing from sexual abuse and trauma, I have witnessed people move from being defined by what happened to them toward greater freedom, restored identity, healthier boundaries, and a renewed relationship with God.
For me, healing means helping someone reclaim their voice, boundaries, identity, confidence, relationship with God, and vision for their future.
My work also extends beyond the clinical setting.
Through Rophe Solutions, my business consulting firm, I help entrepreneurs identify and build around their calling, creating lean, profitable, mission-driven businesses, including private practices, without assuming that massive amounts of debt are necessary to build something meaningful.
My experience at McKinsey & Company gave me a front-row seat to how world-class organizations approach strategy, operations, transformation, and growth. I now bring that strategic approach to entrepreneurs who want to build businesses that are both profitable and purposeful.
What sets my approach apart is that it is rooted in faith and expressed through excellence.
I am also learning to fully embrace the fact that I am multifaceted. For a long time, we can feel pressured to choose one lane. I have learned that the different parts of me, physician, entrepreneur, consultant, author, mentor, and ordained minister, are not competing identities. They are different expressions of the same calling.
Ultimately, I want to heal, equip, and help people steward their health, their gifts, their businesses, their stories, and their God-given assignments well.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
The most important lesson I have learned is simple:
**Focus on Jesus.**
There have been seasons when I did not understand what God was doing. There were moments when, amidst pain, I had no idea how everything would come together. But I have learned that my responsibility is not to understand every chapter. My responsibility is to remain faithful to Him.
Hebrews 12:1–2 tells us to run the race set before us with endurance, “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.”
That has become one of the guiding principles of my life.
I have learned to keep my eyes on Jesus when things are going well and when they are not. When I am celebrated and when I am misunderstood. When I have answers and when I have questions.
My life is a testimony of Genesis 50:20: What was intended for evil, God has redeemed for good.
I have experienced God take the very things that were meant to break me and use them to build something that blesses other people. He can take pain and give it purpose. He can take what looked like an ending and make it the beginning of something greater.
So I don’t want my life to simply be a testimony of what I survived.
I want it to be a testimony of what Jesus can do with a yielded life.
My prayer is that everything I build, in medicine, in business, in ministry, and in the lives I serve, would ultimately point people back to Him.
Jesus is the center. The calling is to serve Him. And the rest, I trust Him to write.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rophe.carrd.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rophemd
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larissa-assam-md-mph-97295640
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRopheCollective
