Match Day 2026

Medical students across the country learned Friday where they will spend the next several years completing their residencies, the postgraduate training program for recent medical school graduates to gain specialized knowledge and practical experience in a chosen field of medicine.

Alexis Moore celebrates with her family and friends after learning where she will complete her residency. (Photo by Kristen Martin)

At the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, members of the Class of 2026 opened their envelopes in unison, one of the last celebrations of their time together as a cohort.

All 75 members of the graduating class who entered the National Resident Matching Program were successfully placed in a residency program — a 100% match rate. They stood with their families, friends, classmates and faculty members as they tore open their envelopes to reveal the next stop in their medical training. Prior to receiving their envelopes, each student had the opportunity to walk across the stage to a song of his or her choice and a personalized slide show.

“Our mission is to create doctors for North Carolina,” said Dr. Jason Higginson, executive dean of the Brody School of Medicine. “A little over 50 percent of the class matched in primary care, and 40 percent are staying right here in North Carolina.”

Twelve percent of the students matched with ECU Health. This is the first time since 2017 that the class has included an applicant and match in neurosurgery.

Among the class, three students told their stories of what led them to Brody and where they hope to go from here.

Valentina Mǎrginean

Valentina Mărginean has made a life of noticing gaps and finding ways to bridge them.

As a child she moved with her parents from Romania to Youngstown, Ohio, in the Appalachian foothills. She received a scholarship to Ohio Wesleyan where she studied public health and chemistry while playing rugby, a mindful sport she calls it. She played wing, which gave her a vantage point to see the how the different parts of the team create the whole.

“Even though the sport itself people perceive as being very brutal, mindfulness is important in everything we do because players are always interacting with other humans,” Mărginean said.

During school she traveled to Haiti, part of a small research grant examining variables that destabilize Haitian public health systems.

Mărginean found out she will complete a residency in internal medicine at ECU Health Medical Center.

Back in Ohio, she studied hard and had a spare semester to spend in India, putting her public health policy education into practice. In Uttar Pradesh and New Delhi, she focused her study and efforts on the differences in US and Indian pharmaceutical patent law.

“Six years of French wasn’t enough to get to the heart of Haitian Creole,” Mărginean said. “But I loved learning from the communities I worked with across India and Haiti.”

Valentina Mărginean learns she will complete her residency at ECU Health. (photo by Ben Abel)

After college, she worked with Operation Smile, an organization that provides cleft lip and palate reconstructive surgeries in the developing world. She was in a unique role there: not a medical provider but an administrator, a deconflictor. Someone who gets things done to allow the healers room to do their work.

“Everything from coordinating patient recruitment to volunteer recruitment, to getting the inventory, buying it, getting it checked through customs and getting it released,” Mărginean said. “It involved cultivating investment between the communities and volunteers we served.” After her adventures in Haiti and India, she was sent to Malawi, then Brazil, then India, and Madagascar. Then back to India again.

She returned to the States for a position in clinical research and applied to the BSN program at UNC-Chapel Hill. Those five semesters clipped along quickly, but it was during a pharmacology class that one of her nursing instructors suggested she look into medicine instead of nursing. Mărginean didn’t get a break between graduating nursing school and starting medical school. She got her first real experiences with patient care while working as a palliative care nurse at the same time she was taking classes at Brody.

“That was a pretty cool experience because I was a novice in both fields and I learned so much from their team of stellar nurses,” Mărginean said. She applied to several programs before being accepted at Brody. Had she been extended other opportunities, though, she still would have come to Greenville.

“The mission drew me in, period,” Mărginean said. “Even if I had gotten in somewhere else, I would have chosen Brody again and again for the mission. The rural population that we serve and the complexity of the patients that we care for is of utmost importance to me.”

After becoming an internal medicine physician, Mărginean hopes to pursue advanced training in addiction medicine and transplant hepatology, which focuses on the liver, gallbladder, biliary tree and pancreas. Such a position would set her up to be one of the few physicians in the state who focus on liver failure in patients with substance use disorder.

“The one-stop shop principle is really what brought me here. That’s the kind of training that I wanted, the rural training with a rural focus,” Mărginean said.

Along the path through medical school, she and her husband — who worked any number of part-time jobs to help keep the family on track — had a son. She also sold eggs and the vegetables she grew at their Daisy Lane farm at the farmer’s market in Greenville, which helped her to better connect with, and understand, the members of the community who may one day be her patients.

Mărginean’s Pirate dedication to service also kicked into high gear during her time at Brody. She served on the board for the Greenville Community Shelter Clinic, participated with the local syringe service program and worked in Dr. Karlene Cunningham’s lab, working with regional perinatal mental health populations.

“My long-term career goal is to bridge addiction medicine with a gastrointestinal service to streamline liver transplant care,” Mărginean said.

Rugby, overseeing programs for a global nonprofit, and medicine all share a trait that Mărginean has proven of herself in spades: managing, deconflicting, connecting those who need with those who can fill those needs and her Brody education is helping her to do just that.

John D. Moore

 John D. Moore’s medical school journey — made possible by family and faith — has called him to care for expectant mothers and new families.

“Seeing the birth of my two children impacted me deeply,” he said. “I assumed the wonder, joy and awe I felt were simply because they were mine, but that changed during my OB/GYN rotation, when I saw my first delivery as a medical student. Not only did the awe return, but it was further deepened by an understanding of what pregnancy physically and emotionally demands of the mother from a medical perspective.”

Moore learned today that he will be completing an OB/GYN residency at Prisma Health – University of South Carolina in Columbia.

“We’re excited to go and help as many people as we can,” Moore said with his wife, Jill, and his two daughters by his side. “We are together, and that’s what matters.”

“We’re pleasantly surprised,” Jill Moore added.

For the family whose roots are in Charlotte and who lived apart while Moore completed the first two years of medical school — his wife and children moved to Greenville during the last two years — the time and distance only made them stronger. It also cemented Moore’s inclinations to bloom where he is planted.

Moore will be completing an OB/GYN residency at Prisma Health – University of South Carolina in Columbia. (Photo by Steven Mantilla)

“My kids were 2 and 4 when we started, and instead of ripping everyone up from Charlotte to Greenville, my wife and I decided to split time so my wife would be closer to family support.  They would stay in Charlotte, and I would commute to and from Greenville on the weekends,” he said. “My wife was a single parent for the week, and I was trying to stay afloat in medical school. It was beyond challenging, but anytime the guilt inside of me crept out, my wife reassured me, ‘We are both choosing this, and we are okay. It’s just what we have to do right now, and it’s a season. This too shall pass.’”

With the whirlwind of medical school coming to a close, Moore is reflective about this new season and what it will bring for his family, his new community and his patients.

“As of now, I absolutely see myself practicing in North Carolina long term,” he said. “My wife and I have many friends and family in the Charlotte area, and we consider it home. That being said, my family and I are devoted to going where our faith calls us. This is a big world, and there are areas that are desperate for medical care. My family and I feel very blessed and fortunate to receive this education, and we want to positively impact as many people as we can.”

Moore is no stranger to medicine. His mother was an emergency medicine and OB/GYN nurse and supervisor, so he was around the medical profession — but started out in a different career. He worked for a family business; when it was sold, he decided to pursue firefighting. That led to the first course toward EMT-Basic licensure — and that altered Moore’s future career path.

“I took that course and fell in love with medicine. I wanted to know more about everything I was learning about. I wanted to know why, not just how to treat,” he said. “I also realized everyone around the firehouse dinner table wanted to go on calls for a house fire or a car accident, and I wanted to go on calls for chest pain or difficulty breathing.”

Each step of Moore’s journey has been meaningful, including getting to know his classmates and their potential.

“I can attest that my class has some of the smartest and hardest-working people I’ve ever met. I feel our class embodies the ideals Brody is working toward and the communities my classmates represent will gain a true ally in their health and well-being,” he said. “I believe Brody School of Medicine has prepped me very well for the gauntlet that is residency. Brody has prepped us not only to go in with a plan but also to work as part of a team and, most importantly, to connect with patients. I think this comes down to the culture the school tries to build and the work ethic students here have.”

Even as the future remains to be seen, Moore has a good idea of the mark he wants to leave on medicine.

“My aim in my practice is to ensure that when a pregnant patient comes to me, she has no doubt that my recommendations and the care I provide are the same care I would provide to my own wife or daughters,” he said. “I want the mother to feel certain that I am providing the best evidence-based care for her and her unborn child.”

He hopes to provide quality care for women in all stages of life.

“I want women who are going through menopause to feel heard, and I want them to know someone is working for them to help transition to a new stage in life. I want those who are struggling with fertility issues to feel that someone is working to try and help those dreams come true. I don’t need my mark in medicine to ring across the landscape of academia; I just need my patients to know I’m fighting for them to have the best quality of life they can have.” 

Mackenzie Morgan

For Mackenzie “Mack” Morgan, the one-time Disney princess, this Match Day deepened her roots in the east and her commitment to the challenges of the patient population here. Morgan’s top choice was ECU Health for pediatrics. Her second choice was Duke University.

“I’ve spent the last four years working with patients whom I love, patients in underserved rural communities, and I didn’t want to leave,” she said. “I didn’t set out for that initially but going to ECU has grown my love for service and patient advocacy.”

She added that being in a committed relationship with someone with one year left at the medical school sweetened the choice a bit.

Morgan, 27, grew up in Wilmington and graduated from Eugene Ashley High School. At 15, a talent scout spotted her at Independence Mall and said she was the very image of Anna, the heroine from Disney’s Frozen, come to life. She signed with Events with Character, and in time she would don the mermaid tail of Ariel, the locks of Rapunzel, the chaps of Jessie.

“It’s a big performance. We did singing, story time, crafts,” Morgan said. “One boy once said, ‘I can see your knees,’ beneath my mermaid’s tail, and I had to say, ‘Well, our tails have joints just like your legs.’ Another time I was Jessie, and a child asked why I was person-sized, not a toy.

“You have to be ready for hard-core interrogations. I said, ‘All the princesses are friends, and Cinderella’s fairy godmother made me person-sized just for this party.’ They will make sure you are the real thing, a real Disney princess come to life.”

ECU fourth-year student Mackenzie Morgan matched at ECU Health in Pediatrics. (Photo by Ken Buday)

The children’s hospital was a common assignment, but Morgan didn’t consider medicine and pediatrics until the end of her career at North Carolina State University, where she finished valedictorian. Despite that fact, she didn’t get into the Brody School of Medicine on the first pass and was waitlisted unsuccessfully at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

So she sought additional clinical experience, earning an EMT-B certification, working as a COVID‑19 testing coordinator, and finally, as a set medic for film productions in town, including Netflix.

The next year, she was again waitlisted at Brody and UNC. When Brody finally offered her a spot, she withdrew from UNC.

“I was totally sold on Brody’s mission and on medical school in the east,” she said.

A cornerstone of her Brody experience was the school’s two‑year Foundations of Doctoring curriculum, which emphasizes patient communication and clinical skills.

“It teaches you how to doctor,” she said. “You have to take care of the person before you tackle the disease.”

Morgan is wrapping up a year as president of SCRUBS, Student Collaborative Resources for Understanding and Brody Success, a peer-created program designed to reduce resource anxiety among first-year students.

“It addresses the mental stress of, ‘Am I studying the right stuff?’ We created course‑specific resources, flash cards, review videos — even a YouTube page,” she said, and research on the program shows students feel less overwhelmed and perform better on tests.

“I’ve made so many professional and personal relationships,” she said. “I want to deepen them, not cut ties.”

Long term, she said she hopes her patients will not only trust her and her care plans but avoid the negative sentiments many develop for hospitals and clinics.

As she prepares to graduate, she reflects on how far she’s come. And how in an intense growth experience, time can feel both compressed and eternal. Embrace that, she would tell her younger self.

“It’s like I started [medical school] yesterday. It’s also like I cannot remember a time when I was not a medical student,” she said. “It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do, but look forward to what you’ll become.”

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