In 2023, the University of Washington School of Public Health and School of Medicine embarked on an international search for a transformative leader to serve as the new Chair for the Department of Global Health.
On October 1, Heidi van Rooyen began her appointment as the Chair of the Department of Global Health (DGH). Van Rooyen is an internationally recognized and accomplished South African scholar. For the last three decades she has led, with distinction, multi-disciplinary teams to deliver impactful bio-behavioral-social research on COVID, HIV and AIDS, health and sexual and reproductive rights through a mix of public health, health systems, implementation science, intervention and policy research.
DGH Faculty and staff came together on her first day to welcome her at a Meet the Chair event hosted by the Department’s Human Resources Team. Dean Timothy Dellit, School of Medicine and Dean Hilary Goodwin, School of Public Health were on hand to welcome her to Seattle and the University of Washington.
Van Rooyen spoke to the group assembled both in-person and online about what we can expect of her as a leader, her approach to the first 100 days, and her expectations of the DGH community. “I like being able to take big ideas and make them work, I’m intrigued by the magic of interdisciplinary work that combines the humanities, social sciences and global health, that fuses science with art” shared van Rooyen. “I’m excited about work that humanizes us, that allows for a fullness of being”, she said.
“I think her speech resonated with people” said Lisa Nonzee, Sr. Human Resources Manager. “I appreciate her sharing her poetry. It spoke to who she is and how she got here” commented Aleisha Peresuh, Program Manager- Global Cardiovascular Health Program. “I look forward to seeing what the new era of DGH will look like with Heidi as Chair.”
For those who missed hearing her speech, we have reprinted it below.
Meet the Chair of the Department of Global Health
1st October 2024
Thank you for the warm welcome in person and online: I want to talk about four things today: 1) to say something about who I am; 2) to talk about what you can expect of me as a leader; 3) to share my approach for the first 100 days in this role and finally; 4) to say what my expectations of you are.
Part 1: Who am I?
Last Stop
The old white stork
close to retirement
feeling the weight
of one too many deliveries
in this old makeshift village,
circles it one last time,
her final offering safe in
her trusty pink pouch.
She zig-zags across the four corners
of this 3.2 kilometer patch
of mean corrugated iron shanties
swampy informal settlement
rows of long squat
chicken coop houses
30,000 children, dogs, families
pouring out its edges.
A red-brick postage stamp
two-bedroom semi-detached house
red bougainvillea tree
bursting out its front yard,
catches her eye.
She flies in low and steady,
drops her parcel,
turns quickly,
thoughts of her tea
whetting her lips.
Mom shuffles over as she hears
a soft thud at the wooden door.
Opens it a crack,
sees that pale face
those bright eyes
and feels a warmth
settle across her chest.
Dad shirtless, old grey shorts
clasping his empty bottom
wonders over at the fuss.
Occasional bed-boy on the train
world’s worst rent collector
idle consumer of unrefined alcohol
leans over,
finds a breath,
he didn’t know he’d lost.
The noisy clutch of siblings
jostle to the door,
take a look at that red,
puckered face
and questioning eyes,
shut the door immediately,
wonder:
where she will sleep
what she will wear
whose food will she eat?
This poem tells of my early beginnings in Wentworth, a working-class community on the east coast of South Africa. A start deliberately fashioned by Apartheid laws that governed people, allocated resources and opportunity along racial lines. I am mixed race. Declared not quite black. Not white enough. I have always felt other. Like I didn’t belong. Because of this. But also, because from a from an early age I knew I was queer.
Representation matters. Seeing others who look like you, are like you, who have similar issues and struggles, helps you feel seen, and visible, helps you feel like you matter. These aspects of my identity: my race, my gender, my queerness infuse every fiber of my being and will shape all that I do with and in the role of Chair of DGH.
2. What you can expect of me as a leader
Growing up I felt deep shame for that cramped valley I was dropped into. As I got older, I began to see beyond its limits, to the gifts of its unfolding, the way it helps me stand in the world, ears tuned to injustice, hands compelled to make a difference, feet grounded, heart open, imagination unbounded.
Community saved my life and that of my family. It has inspired the work that I am most passionate about – developing and testing community-based innovative models for HIV counselling, testing, prevention, and treatment that ensure inclusion and access for those without voice. Essentially those on the margins of the mainstream, privilege and power.
Wentworth reminds me that I am who I am because of others. It has fashioned a love of people and teams. Nascent ideas fostered in youth leadership committees have grown and deepened. New ones have been added. Here are 7 things you should know about me as a leader.
I am driven by purpose and lead through living certain values such as equity and social justice, fairness, integrity; I lead through principle, by what I do; not just what I say. I look forward to figuring out our purpose, determining the values that will shape us and our work.
People matter. I know and have seen how generous dollops of my time, attention, belief and trust in others, leads to wellbeing, enables them, good science and success to flourish.
To lead is to be of service. I am driven by a desire to make a difference, to leave people, things, places in a better shape than when I found them.
I work hard to earn and extend trust. I will be open, honest and transparent. Transparency is possible even with the constraints that limit senior leadership. I will say what I mean. I will follow-up on what I say I will do. I am accountable.
For me, leadership is more about relationships and connections than power and authority. I will work to connect and collaborate across geographies, silos, departments and schools.
I will be honest, direct, firm and clear. I will always give you the benefit of the doubt. I expect that you will operate at a place of stretch, from a desire to be and do better. I will give feedback on both the good and bad and not shy away from the more difficult conversations. I will allow for mistakes, for growing and learning.
I live a conscious life. I pay careful attention to these three pursuits (work, self and relationship); I hold them in constant conversation. One emboldens the other. Several practices help: writing poetry, journaling; retreats, walking and swimming. They keep me centered, clear and grounded, enable me to lead, love, learn and listen from an intentional and healthy space.
Part 3: The first 100 days
Franklin D. Roosevelt is credited with this concept which refers to the beginning of a politician's term in office. Many others have adopted these ideas to think about the first few days in leadership. I have used these in preparing for other big roles I have taken on. I draw on them again now.
Two key words will define my agenda and approach for these first 100 days with you. I want to listen and learn. The overriding objective is to learn as much about you in DGH, to figure out who you are, the way things are done here, your hopes and dreams. I will engage with students, staff and faculty. This will be an appreciative inquiry – that means listening for the strengths and positive in others and in the Department. I will also listen for missed opportunities, for pressure points and challenges.
After these internal engagements, I want to zero out and talk to a cross section of critical friends of DGH and UW. These are people outside our echo chamber who can be honest with us, who can tell us where we have stalled, invite us to think differently, push us towards clarifying our competitive edge as a Department. These critical friends may be ex-colleagues, other schools and departments, funders, those who want our students for their workforces, our partners and collaborators in global health.
I will be actively listening. Listening with a view to how to lead and shape this Department. By the end of my first 100 days, I would like to identify four or five themes/priorities that I think we should be working on. During this time, I will try to figure out the human and financial resources we will need to do this. I will communicate my learnings and observations as I go along. In Quarters 2 and 3 of 2025, I will present these ideas and priorities to you. This ongoing engagement and communication with you, is key to getting buy-in for these ideas, to us co-creating and shaping our strategy and vision for the next 5 years.
The remit for the new Chair of DGH was to deepen the work of decolonizing GH. I said yes, (to the job, not the dress) because I appreciated your efforts in starting this work and relished the opportunity to deepen it. I said yes, because I felt that there are enough of you committed to doing this work.
I want to see how we create a department where the framework of decoloniality, the fundamentals of equity, diversity and inclusion, are embodied in all aspects of our work: from training, recruitment and retrenchment of faculty, staff and students; to curricula and research, to ensuring we live the principles and values of genuine partnership in all aspects of our work. Here’s another poem.
Belonging
I’m seeing a biokineticist for my knees. The left a mishmash of scars and a full knee replacement. The good one, not so good now. After years of compensation, its calling for attention. The bio works with pain and how it rests in our bodies and minds. Locked in my knees are my white forefathers plundering my black ancestors. Hunched in my back are generations of broken brown and black people, too afraid to stand. I discover sinews of contempt, long discarded bones, invisible muscles flexing with my past and present, figuring out how land, place, ancestry, identity come to live now in me. I’m surprised at how I can’t do simple movements, and others come easily, of how far back pain extends, where it lodges, how the unwiring of early scripts is constant, everyday work. I find release in the mountain pose. Standing straight and tall, arms at my sides, hands open, chest out, neck and head tilted up and forward, I’m everything and nothing, not my past or my future, this or that identity. In those moments, I belong fully and finally to myself.
Part 4: My expectations of you
That poem is a useful segue to saying a few things about my expectations of you. It is a reminder that we are all these aspects of our identities, and yet also, simultaneously, more than that. It reminds me that doing the work, that tackling these persistent structures (all the “isms”), is everyday work.
I will take seriously my side of the bargain: to lead a process that will allow us to define and unpack what decolonising means for global health, for us as a department. It will be tough. It will ask a lot of all of us – black, white, mixed race, queer, straight, men and women, gender non-conforming. It will require that we work on ourselves, as well as commit to doing this work with each other. I ask that you roll up your sleeves, come with open hearts as we do this work. That’s my first expectation of you.
The second is the recognition that doing this work, creating and developing a DGH that we all want, is all our work. Yours and mine. That we ride the successes and the failures together. That we take individual and joint responsibility for what we can and cannot achieve; that we create and shape its culture, values and vision together.
And the third, is an ask. I come from a different socio-cultural context to you. This shapes how I see the world; the ways I think, speak, listen and communicate. And so much in-between. Along the way, with the very best of intentions, we may miss each other. I may get some things right. I may get a few things wrong. I may say things that offend, unsettle, unnerve. Let me know. Let me know when something lands awkwardly. I ask that we take a deep bow towards each other; as I come to learn about your culture and context, and you come to learn about me, and mine.
I have stepped out of the comforts of home and country into the land of the Coast Salish peoples. A land that shares waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot nations. But I don’t come alone. I am bolstered by my ancestors, the love of family and friends, the blue-green seas of Cape Town and the magnificence of Table Mountain.
DGH community, I’m honored and ready to lead. I would be delighted if you joined me for the journey.