Tell us a little bit about yourself  

My background is in nursing working in emergency and humanitarian/lower-resource settings in Canada, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania. I have also worked as a hospital operations manager, which was quite a broad portfolio dealing with everything from staffing, bed flow, infection control, complaints and the occasional rogue bat (of the order Chiroptera)! 

I completed my MSc in International Public Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and have a Bachelor of Nursing Science from Queen’s University in Canada. I have supported monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and research in Lebanon and Uganda, as well as working with LSTM’s METRe group in South Sudan to help facilitate their 2018 Household Survey. I most recently worked with the Francophone branch of LSTM’s Emergency Obstetric Care and Quality of Care Unit supporting program delivery and research to increase the quality and availability of integrated HIV, TB, malaria, and antenatal/postnatal care in Chad and Togo. During this project I also led an operational research project assessing regional variations in risk to maternal and child health in Chad.  

Why did you decide to attend the UW for graduate school? 

I was really drawn to the UW Global Health PhD program because of its emphasis on both health metrics and implementation science. My background in emergency/humanitarian response, M&E, and operations management, has really demonstrated how fundamental both metrics and implementation science are to the field of global health. I am thrilled to be part of UW’s cutting-edge program in implementation science to better understand how to bridge these gaps between research and practice, and hopefully contribute to more meaningful research long-term.  

My UW research assistantship with the START Center is also proving to be a fantastic opportunity to broaden my interests and knowledge, while also further developing my research and project management skills. It is very rewarding to be working with such a talented group on a wide variety of projects. 

What are your research interests? 

My research interests include non-communicable diseases, health systems strengthening, improving patient outcomes, and implementation science. I am also very interested in the role of geospatial technologies in health programming. 

What are you enjoying most about your graduate program? 

I am so impressed by the breadth of expertise and teaching excellence at UW. It is just incredible to see and hear about all the work that is being done, and I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from so many global experts. In keeping with this theme, our cohort also brings an impressive range of experience, from many different countries and areas of global health and I am really looking forward to learning from my classmates as well as our profs!