Maryam Davodi-Far seemed destined to play a role on the local health care scene. By the age of 15, she was volunteering as a candy striper at Sharp Cabrillo Hospital. And while earning a bachelor’s in anthropology at UCSD, she took a job as a lab technician, immersing herself in the cloistered world of medical research. That experience convinced her that her future in the health care field lay not in a laboratory but on the administrative side.

To help reach her goal, she earned a master’s degree in health care administration from National University, then commuted to the University of La Verne, where she earned a doctorate in public administration. She found jobs that satisfied her qualifications. She was executive director and CEO of the San Diego American Indian Health Center and director of women and children’s health services at the San Ysidro Health Center.

Now, 33, as she and her husband, attorney David Wu, await the birth of their first child, Davodi-Far is nurturing a health care organization of her own creation. The Cancer Coping Center takes a holistic approach to helping families and patients by bringing art therapy into the hospitals. She founded the organization after accompanying her mother-in-law for cancer treatments. The bleak waiting rooms offered nothing but a few old magazines.

She credits her parents — her father was a college professor and her mother an interior decorator — for bringing her up with a sense of aesthetics and a passion for public service. Ultimately, Davodi-Far says those influences could help her put new meaning into an old phrase: practicing the “art of medicine.”