Core Faculty
Natarajan Venkatayan, MD Program Director
Dr. Natarajan Venkatayan brings to HCA a strong commitment to resident education. He is motivated to build an exceptional program and develop the next generation of physicians and physician leaders. He has robust medical administrative experience and close to two decades of clinical experience. Dr. Venkatayan is very affable, has good listening ears, and possesses excellent problem-solving skills.
He earned his medical degree in India and completed his residency program in New York. Prior to moving to Houston, he was the Program Director with the Texas A&M Family Medicine Residency program in Victoria, TX. He is very passionate about teaching residents. His hobbies are playing music and cooking.
Carol Gambrill DO
Carol Gambrill, DO serves as the FM Residency Associate Program Director. She was born and raised in Anadarko, Oklahoma. After attending medical school at Oklahoma State University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Tulsa, OK, she completed her internship and residency at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences. She is dual Board Certified in Family Medicine and Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine. She has shared her passion for academic medicine since 2013, serving as Core Faculty and Program Director spanning two residency programs in Oklahoma and Texas, and has helped train over 60 Family Medicine Resident physicians.
Larry Ladi MD
Dr. Ladi completed a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from the University of Houston. He received his medical degree from Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara School of Medicine in Guadalajara, Mexico. Dr. Ladi completed two residencies before finishing a fellowship in sleep medicine, followed by a fellowship in pulmonary disease and critical care medicine, serving as chief fellow, at Hahnemann University Hospital and Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. Dr. Ladi then completed fellowship training in interventional pulmonology at The Ohio State University, Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Larry Ladi joined HCA Houston Healthcare West in January 2021 and is board certified in pulmonary diseases, internal medicine and family medicine.
Brett Garrett MD
Brett Garrett, MD is Board Certified in Family Medicine. He born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He graduated from Central Michigan University College of Medicine in 2019 and completed his Family Medicine residency at HCA Houston Healthcare West in 2022. Currently, he is at Hope Clinic as Core Faculty for the residency program and applying for the National Guard as a medical officer. In addition to medicine, he enjoys tennis, video games, and the piano.
Sophia Tribie, MD
Dr Sophia Tribié, is a family physician with Haitian background. She completed her residency in Brooklyn NY then did a fellowship in Global Health in Massachusetts where she concentrated her training in refugee care. She gained a thorough understanding of the medically underserved population through this program, which also sparked her interest in continuing to work with these patients.
In her free time, she enjoys hiking, going for a run, swimming, cooking and discovering new places.
She speaks French, Haitian Creole and English fluently.
Zuhair Ali MD, Research Director
Dr. Zuhair Ali. Zuhair is our Research Director for Graduate Medical Education. In partnership with our Program Directors, he will be responsible maintaining ACGME accreditation for programs within our division by creating and executing the scholarship agenda for residents and fellows. This entails faculty development on topics relating to the research lifecycle, mentoring faculty and learners in scholarship, and developing research opportunities with various partners such as Quality departments internally, and with University of Houston College of Medicine externally. Zuhair comes to us with many years of experience managing and participating in clinical research for graduate medical education programs. Prior to joining HCA, he was the research director at New York Presbyterian, directly supporting the Emergency Medicine service line, with involvement supporting other programs’ clinical research agenda such as cardiology, hematology, and oncology. Zuhair completed his medical training at St. Christopher’s Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine, and received additional research training from Harvard Medical School Global Clinical Scholars.