Ask Dr. Manali Shendrikar who her greatest role model is, and she will tell you it is her late mother. A foreign medical graduate from India, Dr. Shendrikars mother was a family physician. She remembers her mother coming home from seeing patients all day, and still cooking fresh, homemade Indian food every night. She taught her daughter that she could do anything in life and still balance career and family. With three young children of her own, Dr. Shendrikar is doing just that.A family is important to herall families, in fact. She loves taking care of generations of families and often counts multiple family members as patients. Away from the office, she enjoys working out. She has also snorkeled some of the most picturesque beaches in Thailand and Mexico, where she enjoys practicing her Spanish. Dr. Shendrikar hopes to someday climb Machu Picchu in Peru, a dream she shared with her late mother.Dr. Shendrikars patients should not be surprised if they find her on a stage somewhere in Los Angeles, doing stand-up comedy. In high school and college, she was part of Bloomers, an all-female comedy troupe. She had to forego her comedic aspirations to focus on attending medical school but recently began performing again. So on stage and off, she hopes to keep all her patients smiling.