Many public health professionals begin their careers knowing exactly what they want to do — but Tori Chan was not one of them. “I didn't know what I was doing as an undergrad; I just wanted a degree. After graduation I took a paid internship that led to a job, kind of accidentally, and for a few years I jumped around with nonprofits, working on racial and criminal justice, doing a lot of HR stuff for different organizations.”
Then Tori happened upon an article about Jimmy Carter and his work on the elimination of Guinea Worm, and it stuck with her. “I always enjoy the science-y side of things, and the work at the Carter Center was happening primarily in West Africa, so I was just drawn to that. And when I focused more on public health, that's when I decided to go to NYU.”
Tori was extremely busy during her time at NYU: she enrolled in the dual degree program earning her MPA/MPH, she worked as a graduate assistant, conducted research projects and did internships in West Africa. “The first summer I took a class at NYU Accra on food insecurity, and I found an internship just by walking around to organizations asking for opportunities; it was a bit of a risk,” she said. “But then another internship in Sierra Leone at a maternity hospital turned out to be a unique experience, because Ebola broke out and I was evacuated after a month or two of being there.”
Though Ebola threw a wrench into her internship, Tori’s experience inadvertently gave her credibility. “After graduating from NYU it was easy to find a job in Sierra Leone because I was familiar with the country.” She hadn’t planned to stay in West Africa for six or seven years, but she enjoyed her time there. “I go back to Liberia often for fun, and sometimes I'll visit Ministry of Health colleagues. When they show me the outcomes of projects I worked on, it’s very rewarding to know that an assessment that we did, or data that we collected, has now been translated into policy. I’m proud of that.”
During her time in West Africa, Tori learned a lot about the process of nonprofit and government collaboration. “Real change takes time,” she said, “and it takes years to build policies and guidelines that strengthen health systems. I also learned that donor funds are not always effective or efficient. Sometimes a country will have three big donors, with different approaches to universal health coverage. Then there are different models of how they operate in real life, and then how it works at the health facility level. I experienced those dynamics, which was very eye-opening for me, and something that I think you can only learn about by being there.”
While her internships taught Tori about public health work, they also taught her about herself. “I didn't have much of a clue at first; I just wanted a job overseas. So I fell into grant writing, which is useful because every organization wants a grant writer. But you don't get to celebrate much when you finish the application, and even if you get the funds then you just move on to the next one; I didn't want that to be my primary skill. I knew I wanted a role on the policy side; I was figuring out what I liked and didn't like. Sometimes at smaller organizations there are more opportunities to try out different kinds of jobs. I dabbled in a lot of different things, and was exposed to a lot, so I could figure out that I liked policy, I liked the program side; I liked this, I didn't like that.”
Although Tori enjoyed the time she spent in West Africa, she recently returned to the U.S. and took a job that is less hands-on. “I was getting burnt out, to be honest, overseeing multiple programs in Sierra Leone and Liberia. My current position at Evidence Action allows me to step back into a more advisory role. I work with governments to introduce or scale up the use of a dual HIV/syphilis test for our maternal syphilis program. We provide the technical assistance to roll it out at scale, so it’s a cost-effective strategy.”
You might think that Tori’s career has been a fluke, hearing her use words like “accidental,” “risky” and “fell into” to describe its path. “I'm not much of a planner,” she admits. “I like to flow around a bit.” But while she didn’t know exactly where she was headed early on, each detour and dead end taught her important lessons. “I’m drawn to public health issues that are underfunded or under the radar, which is why I like working on syphilis now,” she said. With each new experience in the U.S. and abroad, Tori has built a fulfilling career by creating a niche for herself in which she could make a lasting impact.