How many years were you in the JA Fellows program?
1 year
What year did you graduate from high school?
2010
What college do you attend, what's your major and expected graduation year?
I graduated from Duke University in 2014 on the pre-medical track with a major in Cultural Anthropology. I am currently obtaining my Masters in Public Health from Emory University in the Health Policy and Management with a certificate in Socio-contextual Determinants of Health with an anticipated graduation date of May 2017.
Favorite sports team or food?
Jamaican, Latin, and Italian food; Duke Blue Devils
What are some of your recent achievements? What is your proudest achievement in life?
I was currently voted to be the Academic and Social co-chair for the Association of Black Public Health students at Emory and was selected as a student ambassador for the admissions board. During my senior year at Duke, I was selected as the 2014 Kappa Man of the Year for my chapter and was also awarded a plaque for the significant contributions I've made during my tenure as President and in other leadership positions.
My proudest accomplishment is my involvement with Duke's Global Health Institute, where I was granted an opportunity to develop and implement a project to help a community and learn about resources. I was originally accepted into the Student Research Training program in November alongside three other undergraduate students. Together, we worked with community based organizations in Sri Lanka to identify problems of interest and ways we could assist. Working with staff in the institute, we developed a budget, received funding, organized transportation and funding, and a plan of action. We then traveled to Sri Lanka for 8 weeks, where I taught English, math, science, and music classes to the minority Tamil population as well as worked with an organization to empower the people of the communities. Though we were not able to extract the desired data, we were able to develop a nutritional assessment to help the organization we were working with to better serve the interests of the community.
What is the most important thing you took from the JA Fellows program that applies to your life now?
JA Fellows helped me tremendously with the work in Sri Lanka. I learned during the program the rewards and difficulties with working with a team towards a common goal. I also learned how to adjust when things were not going as planned. Additionally, I learned how to better balance between being the CEO of our JA company and performing well in school. I am currently doing my masters full time, while working full time in Cancer Clinical Research, while also running a business. JA was the first time I had been exposed to business operations and the multiple facets of developing and growing a business. I take that experience developing an Annual Report and use it currently in developing revenue and expense reports, which I am also learning in my Masters program. JA Fellows allowed for me to learn skill sets and lessons central to my passions and served as a strong foundation for everything I am currently learning and doing. I am forever grateful to the program for the lessons I learned, the individuals who spent their time investing in me, and mentoring me.