BEACHWOOD, Ohio — Randy Vince grew up on the proverbial mean streets of Baltimore, Maryland.
"I grew up on the west side of Baltimore, which, you know, is rife with a lot of struggles similar to a lot of inner cities across this country," he says.
He arrived in Cleveland just over a year ago with a mission and a passion to make a difference, but long before he arrived, he wasn't sure he'd ever make it out of his neighborhood.
"I didn't think I was going to live to be 18," he admits, "and when I got to 18, I didn't think I'd make it to 21."
Randy, the oldest of four, was raised in a loving home with a strong mother and grandmothers. They did their best to teach and protect him, but no one could keep the real world from finding him.
"Within the neighborhood, there were a lot of struggles," he said. "Things like poverty, violence, and drug infestation.
And it was something he dealt with first hand.
"Substance abuse was something that my dad dealt with," Vince recalled. "He was a loving father, but struggled with drugs. I lost him from overdose at the age of 12. Suddenly, a lot of my friends were losing their dads early, or they weren't around because they were incarcerated."
Like many of his friends, Vince dreamed of becoming a professional athlete. Medicine couldn't have been further from his mind.
"Seeing a Black man as a doctor wasn't something I grew up seeing," he says now.
However, he did grow up seeing his own family always helping others.
"They would always tell me, 'It's not about what you can do for yourself in life; it's what you can do for others,'" he said. "And because of that, I always had this sense of service."
The death of Vince's father made a significant impact, and by his sophomore year, his grades were slipping. He was cutting classes and spending more time on the streets.
He was also playing football and starting to get interest from colleges. That's when his coach took him aside.
"My coach sat me down and said, 'Look, you have a ton of potential, but the way you're going right now, you're not going to go to college, you're not going to play football in college,'" Vince remembers being told. "'You need to turn things around.'"
College wasn't something Randy had even thought about; he didn't know anyone who went to college. The chance was enough to get him to focus, and his grades improved.
He graduated from high school and arrived at Towson University, where he became a varsity letterman in football. Sports came easy; academics did not, but he refused to fail.
"When I got there, I started to see the clear difference between where I went to high school and the education I received compared to some of my peers who went to private schools," he said. "For me, it became study, study, study."
One day in the locker room, Vince overheard two Black teammates talking about going to medical school. Suddenly, there an option he had never considered.
"I remember talking to my grandmother, and she said, 'Look, you're in a position now where you can determine your own destiny,'" Vince recounted. That's when his determination and focus went into overdrive.
At Towson, he double-majored in molecular biology, biochemistry, and bioinformatics as well as chemistry. After graduation, he went to medical school at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, where he earned his MD.
Med school wasn't easy, but neither was surviving in the old neighborhood.
"I started to think, 'I've seen family members work two jobs and make ends meet. I can study for eight hours, if that's what needs to be done in order to be successful.'" Dr. Vince remembers telling himself. "'I can make that sacrifice just to achieve this.'"
His journey then took him to a Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Health Systems residency. While in medical school, he lost his grandmother, and that ignited a passion for urologic oncology.
Randy eventually found himself at the University of Michigan, earning a master's degree in computational medicine and bioinformatics. He wanted to use precision medicine to combat the concept of racial biology and evaluate the intersectionality of environmental exposures and gene expression on tumor biology.
In short, he wants to change Black history that has long seen Black men being more likely to die from chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
In 2023, Vince arrived in Cleveland to take over as director of minority men's health at the University Hospitals Cutler Center for Men. His mission is educating men to take control of their health, because knowledge and action can change history.
"If we could empower men to take better care of themselves and be around longer to be dads and grandfathers and uncles, imagine the impact it could have on the next generation," he explained.
He hopes his story serves as inspiration that your zip code does not define your future.
"I'm extremely blessed to be in a position that I'm in now, and I want other young men specifically to see me as an example that where you grow up does not have to determine, ultimately, the attitude and where you can go in life," he says. "Because anything is possible."