“Fathoming the great potential of genetic diagnostics and personalized care ignited my passion for becoming a genetic counselor and my desire to contribute to the field through my academic performance and community involvement,” said Violetta Bakunina.  Bakunina, a recent UNL graduate with a bachelor's in Microbiology & another in Counseling Psychology, moved to the United States and settled in Omaha when she was in 11th grade. She came to UNL to pursue her dream of becoming a genetic counselor. “I think my immigration experience kind of facilitated my passion for this field. I didn’t know about genetic counseling beforehand. But when we just moved here, my mom was pregnant, and she had twins,” Bakunina explained. “And it was a complicated pregnancy because what we learned is that she had twin-twin transfusion syndrome, which is basically when twins share the same placenta. So, we had to change several hospitals and moved here because not every hospital could facilitate this kind of ...