WFH: New Challenges & New Opportunities

Let’s take a poll: What is it called when you perform tasks at home that are normally accomplished at your company’s office or the library?

a) Working from home (WFH)

b) Working remotely

c) Teleworking

d) Digital Nomading

e) Pajama Executive

In English, we have a few different ways to say it, but ultimately they all mean the same thing; and represent a practice that many of you are just now trying for the very first time as workplace standards of the last 100 years suddenly, maybe irreplaceably, get upended by a global infectious disease pandemic. 

Working remotely means a lot of different things. While you have probably spent an hour at a coffee shop catching up on email, or taken a conference call from home once or twice when sick, it’s more likely that a permanently remote scenario is new to you. Personally, I’ve been fortunate to travel and work remotely in some capacity for several years, but have been fully remote for the last 11 months – now residing semi-permanently in Medellin, Colombia while continuing multiple jobs from afar.

During this time, I’ve either encountered, fallen victim to, or narrowly avoided many of the classic pitfalls of the Pajama Executive, and today I would like to share some suggestions to help you transition into your new situation. While it may seem disruptive at first, my opinion is that remote work – if designed well – can provide enormous opportunities for professional growth and increased productivity. My hope is that by the end of this article, you, like me, will find more upside in your newfound situation than downside. 

Your Workspace

You’re going to be spending a lot of time here for the foreseeable future. In public health, a common approach to behavior change is to make good habits as easy as possible to accept and maintain. Designing your workspace involves some of the same principles: make your space as comfortable and easy to work in as possible. 

1. Get your technology in order: Identify a dedicated workspace (ideally not in your bedroom, if possible) and arrange your setup with the goal of returning to the same spot every day. The idea is to mimic the conditions at your actual desk in the office. Position your laptop to give you the most ergonomic functionality and appropriate angle and background for video conferences. Test out your call/video conference stability over your wifi network. If your wifi isn’t very stable, do you need to upgrade your internet service? Now is a good time to set up the appointment with your service provider. Strong reliable internet will improve your productivity and, by doing so, ultimately pay for itself. This is why organizations tend to invest a lot in their in-office connectivity. If you are not already required to by your school or employer, consider using a VPN to protect your internet traffic and test any existing connections you might need to access files on the internal servers (Click here for information on Emory’s VPN access). 
2. Routine: How do you normally start your day? Workout, shower, eat a meal (read: drink coffee), get dressed, etc. Repurpose your normal routine to the new context of remote studying or working, and stick to it. Obviously, its reasonable to make more use of your casual wardrobe while working remotely, but for some of us, overdoing it on the casual attire leads to an overly casual disposition – the Pajama Executive might be prone to falling asleep on the job. The best approach, I have found, is to strike a balance and work in clothes that I can feel at least moderately professional in, even if I’m at home. 
3. Food: Working or studying from home can present another insidious challenge – sticking to a healthy diet. At the office or at school, there are socially acceptable times to eat. To break this routine would be difficult, which makes it easy to maintain consistently when you’re in public. However, at home, the (dining room) table is turned – culinary discipline is now 100% in your hands. There are two easy ways to avoid over-snacking, or eating lunch at 10:30am. First, skip the snack foods at the store, and stock up on the healthy stuff. You can’t eat what you don’t buy. Discipline in the store creates discipline in the home. Second, if possible, build your primary workspace somewhere away from the kitchen, and stock it with the essentials you’ll need for the day. We pack our lunch when we go to the office, so why not do the same at home. Ultimately, this strategy works because the less you walk near or through the kitchen, the less likely you are to be tempted. 

Design Your Day

Be deliberate about how you want your days to look. How much time can or should you really dedicate to work versus play. How can you design a situation that will maximize your productivity?

1. Work hours vs. non-work hours: Working remotely can be tricky because your work notifications can go off at any time, even if your work day is over. Most of us now get work email directly on our phones, so this isn’t new. The difference now is that you will have to decide when it is appropriate to respond. Keeping steady, dedicated work hours (communicate them to your superior and your team) can help set the right expectations for you and everyone you work with. Experiment with your “on” allotment and break times, and commit to NOT logging on when you are not scheduled to. This will ultimately help you remain the most efficient when you’re on and the most relaxed when you’re not. The same goes for classwork and studying – make a schedule and stick to it, then maximize your relaxation time when the workday ends. 
2. Daily To-Do list: Distraction starts with not knowing where to start on your work. To-do lists are an excellent solution to this problem. However, one major mistake with to-do lists is forgetting to stop when you’ve finished your list. Sometimes you don’t want to stop the roll you’re on, but it’s better to stick to the list you made a priori because burnout can sneak up on you fast when there is no one else setting the agenda for you. It was the classic American author, Ernest Hemingway who said, “Stop when you’re going good.” He is describing a common existential fear, among authors especially, that if you are on a roll that it won’t last until tomorrow, or that if you don’t take advantage you’ll miss out on some crucial productivity that won’t last until the next day. I personally find this the hardest to do well when I am performing programming tasks. Either way, try not to get sucked into this notion. Hemingway’s approach is based on the idea that if you are in the middle of a productive session towards the end of your day, leaving that inspiration on the table gives you the opportunity to pick it right back up in the morning tomorrow. What inspired your initial productivity will probably inspire subsequent productivity, especially if you return to it with fresh eyes the next day. 
3. Single-tasking: Two weeks ago, ADAP Farah Dharamshi authored an outstanding analysis of multi-tasking and it’s shortfalls. This wisdom is especially relevant for the remote student or employee. Of particular importance, is the idea of single-tasking. Close the tabs on your browser that aren’t immediately necessary for the task at hand, and commit yourself to a single, attainable objective, over a shorter period of time. You will almost certainly notice an improvement in productivity once you start to practice a more focused approach to individual tasks. 

A good employee is…

How would you finish this sentence? 

… is productive.

… is a team player.

… answers emails promptly.

These are all correct answers, all of which are necessary, but probably not by themselves sufficient, to describe a “good” employee. So, let’s try to redefine what this means in the context of remote work. Ultimately, being a good employee doesn’t mean you’re never distracted, or you respond to every email immediately – it means you do your job well and help make the team feel like no one is really remote.

1. Over-communicate: Being remote means we have to compensate a little for the reduction in face-to-face interaction. Be a little more detailed in your emails. Prioritize phone calls over emails, and video conferences over phone calls.
2. Independence: For better or worse, you are probably now going to be asked to perform tasks with less explicit direction than you were used to getting when you worked in the office. This isn’t universally true, because some managers naturally expect more or less independence from their employees. However, this provides a huge opportunity to take on more responsibility for your tasks and remove roadblocks to your success through resourcefulness and determination. This is the kind of initiative every manager dreams of, and will help you become a more productive, low-maintenance employee at home or in an office in the future.
3. Be Flexible: Working or studying at home will inevitably lead to more variability than you may be used to. Expect variability, and roll with it. Your work hours and your co-workers hours may not align perfectly. Everyone is transitioning now, so some people may face challenges that are different than yours. There is a learning curve for everyone, so you might as well embrace it!

WFH: A new normal for the 21st century

It’s hard to say what exactly the workforce of the post-COVID-19 era will look like. Remote work has been popular for the last 15-20 years among a group of backpackers and travelers who coined the term “digital nomad“. This isn’t necessarily what remote work has to look like, but it’s the very first blueprint we have to compare against. Ultimately, as COVID-19 pushes huge swaths of the economy into the home office, it’s very possible that we could be seeing the beginning of a more mainstream revolution in the relationship employees have with their employers and their workplace environment. If this is the case, then now is the time to embrace the new normal and master the WFH lifestyle and workstyle. Either way, this experience is likely to teach you a lot about yourself, your ability to self-manage, your discipline, and your needs as an employee – knowledge that will help you better understand your own strengths and weaknesses going forward. 

Further Reading:

If you are interested in doing a deeper dive into WFH tips and tricks, take a look at some of the articles below:

• Forbes – The art of working remotely
• Vox – Working from anywhere: the good, the bad, and the lovely
• NPR – Tips for making working from home work for you
• Forbes – Building positive habits for full time remote work

Breaking Into – and Surviving In – the Global NGO Sector: Part 3

From alum Roice Fulton (GLEPI, 2014):

On Leadership in Public Health

In the long run democracy will be judged… by the quality of its leaders, a quality that will depend in turn on the quality of their vision. Where there is no vision, we are told, the people perish; but where there is sham vision, they perish even faster.

Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership

As the young leaders of tomorrow, you have the passion and energy and commitment to make a difference. What I’d like to really urge you do is to have a global vision. Go beyond your country; go beyond your national boundaries.

Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon

Leadership is a tough concept to nail down. It’s a term that, in my experience, seems most readily defined in its absence. Everyone has had the misfortune of witnessing a project or organization falling apart due to lack of leadership.

Though I won’t try to offer a concrete definition of leadership, there are two lessons I’d like to share. One is understanding how leadership roles can suddenly emerge along your career path, and how those experiences can inform a vision for positive change that starts locally, but reaches globally. The second lesson is simply recognizing that you, as young public health professionals preparing for the greatest public health crisis of our time, are each leaders whether you like it or not – because the world as it is today demands it of you.

~~~

While preparing to write these posts, I read through everything on PROspective to see what might help frame my own thoughts on leadership in public health. Every piece of advice given on this blog thus far resonates with my experience – but none so strongly as Lauren Christiansen-Lindquist’s treatise on setbacks (not failures!).

In her article, Dr. Christiansen-Lindquist speaks plainly and effectively to that lingering impostor syndrome that seems to plague our entire generation. What’s more, she offers a strategy for moving forward, and recognizing that moving forward is itself a victory worth celebrating. The qualities she describes reflect qualities I’ve appreciated both in my own fleeting experiences in leadership, and in those whom I consider among the greatest leaders of our generation.

One of Lauren’s suggestions is to share those setbacks. For today’s lesson, then, I’ll share the story of how my biggest setbacks led to some of my most valued leadership experiences.

~~~

In 2007, as part of (what I recognize now as) a futile, years-long effort to atone for a middling undergraduate pre-med performance, I moved to Missouri to volunteer as a member of AmeriCorps St. Louis’ Emergency Response Team. After two weeks of training, I was pulled aside and asked to serve as one of a handful of team leaders, tasked with managing a rotating five-person crew during our deployments to conservation and disaster relief projects.

The year that followed would see us respond to ice storms in Missouri, wildfires in Montana, and tornadoes sweeping across the Midwest – with each new crisis demanding that I balance the welfare both of my team and the communities we raced to support. It was a seminal year that instilled in me a vision of how I could be a force for change in communities beyond my own.

Three years later, I returned home to North Carolina to re-center and re-assess my future. I touched base with friends back home, including attending an alumni reunion at a summer educational program I had attended years prior in high school. After volunteering to build a website for the program’s supporting foundation, it wasn’t long before I found myself installed as its vice president – mere weeks before the program suddenly faced an existential funding crisis.

Working together with about a dozen fellow alumni and supporters aged eighteen to near eighty, we were not only able to scrape together the hundreds of thousands needed to keep the program open – we managed to convince the North Carolina legislature to restore funding in perpetuity. That vision I had in AmeriCorps of being a force for change was suddenly realized at a scale I had scarcely imagined. It remains my most cherished life experience.

Today, I’m almost relieved to hold no overt leadership position. My recent attempt to create a research nonprofit here in Geneva exposed the limits of my leadership ability and credibility at this point in my career. It showed to me that in a high-pressure environment, I’m much more comfortable in a support role, rather than at the head of the table.

And so, I moved on to CEPI, quietly keeping its core business sailing smoothly as the organization navigates the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic. But leadership comes in many forms, and that vision for positive change that I first developed in AmeriCorps and actualized in North Carolina remains and grows – and anchors me firmly to the global community which I now serve. In due time, I expect that I’ll be asked, here or elsewhere, to take on more responsibility – at which point I hope to be ready to deliver that vision to the fullest.

~~~

What I want to convey in sharing this story is that my leadership experiences wouldn’t have even happened were it not for some truly existential-level setbacks. Similarly, you may be faced with a call to lead from unexpected places and at unexpected times, especially as we reckon with a pandemic that touches every facet of our work.

We’ve got to be ready for the call when it comes.

With global leaders now facing a public health crisis partly of their own creation, it’s more important than ever that we, as young professionals, anticipate the leadership duties with which we will inevitably be tasked. We must be champions of reason in our workplaces and in our communities. We must forge strong bonds as teammates and across organizations in overcoming the challenges that face us. We must each craft and test our own vision for change locally, drawing thoughtfully from our lived experience.

And, most importantly, we must execute our vision globally and collectively – and conduct our lives in service to those in greatest need of that vision.

We must do all these things because the world as it is today demands it of us. We must answer that call. We must be leaders.

Roice Fulton, MPH (GLEPI, 2014) is currently an independent consultant for the London- and Oslo-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), where he manages projects in CEPI’s epidemiology portfolio. Roice currently lives and works near Geneva, Switzerland.

Juggling 101

Juggle: to throw several objects up into the air, and then catch and throw them up repeatedly so that one or more stays in the air, usually in order to entertain people¹ 

Sound familiar? 

Just when you think you have it under control, another assignment /project /responsibility gets added to your list. How do you find an APE while keeping up with your readings and assignments, preparing for midterms, fulfilling your REAL responsibilities, navigating your roommate issues, while eating healthy, and trying to get to the gym… Oh – and keeping in touch with your friends across the country, calling your parents… keeping up with the latest episode of…

Or, are you are trying to circumnavigate the pressures of applying for grant funding, preparing course/lecture material, writing articles, dealing with administrative deadlines while balancing the demands of parenting and relationship responsibilities, when your HVAC has to be replaced, and your car transmission is on the fritz…

How are you doing it all?

You multi-task of course. You try to accomplish as much as you can, when you can, all at the same time.

Now, while doing things simultaneously may seem like the height of efficiency, in actuality, it reduces work quality and wastes the precious time you are trying to save, resulting in the need to multitask more to complete your duties/responsibilities. All counterintuitive.

Multitasking forces your brain to switch back and forth very quickly from one task to the next. Interruptions as brief as two to three seconds can be enough to double the number of errors on a task.² Numerous studies confirm that task-switching results in loss of productivity, accuracy, and efficiency, it also reduces the ability of the brain to learn new skills.

While the obvious effects of this are lackluster results in your endeavors, according to Dr. David Meyer from the University of Michigan, the more serious consequences are the adverse effects on your health, because of the constantly elevated stress levels.³ “Multitasking is especially stressful when the tasks are important, as they often are on the job. … The brain responds to impossible demands by pumping out adrenaline and other stress hormones that put a person ‘on edge.'”

Dr. Sandra Chapman from the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas, has found that “multitasking is a brain drain, that exhausts the mind, zaps cognitive resources, and if left unchecked, condemns us to early mental decline and decreased sharpness.” Numerous studies indicate that chronic multitaskers have increased levels of cortisol, shown to damage the memory region of the brain.⁴

Researchers Ophir, Nass and Wagner at Stanford studying (student) media multitaskers, found that high multitasker students were always drawing from all the information in front of them, and were not able to keep things separate in their minds. “When they’re in situations where [there] are multiple sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of memory, they’re not able to filter out what’s not relevant to their current goal.”

Doing more things does not determine better results. Doing better things determines better results. Doing one thing to the best of your ability brings about optimal results.

There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.

– Phillip Stanhope

Single tasking

Single tasking, as the term implies, is doing one task at a time with as few distractions/interruptions as possible. And yes, it is easier said than done.

Start here:

Do one thing at a time, but do it well.

• The single browser tab habit: limit yourself to having one tab open at any given time to prioritize the task you are trying to complete. And for more motivation, you may be inspired to try a “single-tabbing” challenge like James Hamblin. 
• The evening planning routine: set 10 minutes aside nightly to plan the next day’s tasks –Identify your two-three priorities, and tackle them first.
• Minimize distractions/focus deeply: keep your smartphone in your drawer, turn off your email to focus on one task at a time. This is harder than it seems, so start with 15-minute intervals, and increase to longer time periods of intense focus.
• Get rid of clutter: keep your workspace as minimal as possible
• Use breaks effectively: stand up, drink a glass of cold water, walk around the office perimeter. You will be more effective, if several times during the day you step away from mentally challenging tasks for 3-5 minutes.

For an excellent, more detailed training-plan for single-tasking and focus, take a deep, undistracted dive into this how-to guide from ZenHabits.net. 

Our days are filled with a constant barrage of distractions, unexpected challenges and increasing responsibilities. But, the science and experience are clear – by doing less all at once, you will likely be able to accomplish more much more.

Breaking Into – and Surviving In – the Global NGO Sector: Part 2

From alum Roice Fulton (GLEPI, 2014)

Observe, Infer, and Engage 

I’m an almost willfully naïve person, for reasons better explained over pints somewhere within a few tube stops of CEPI’s London office. What matters for this post is how that naivete seems to underpin my career strategy: at every turn, it forces me to ask the most basic of questions, and think critically about how the answers affect my understanding of my own place in the public health world.

Case in point: I’d long held this picture of the global NGO community as some distant, impenetrable entity. What do they all actually do? How do they work together? I’m totally new to this scene – how do I fit in?

For years, the barrier to entry seemed prohibitive. Entry-level posts at places like Gavi were sparse, incredibly competitive, seemed only loosely matched to my new epi skillset, and took months of screening and interviews to get through. And at 30, I wasn’t keen on taking up an internship somewhere to try and get a foot in the door.

~~~

A few factors would change the whole equation. One was my introduction to the world of independent consulting, which began with a short-term remote contract to conduct a systematic review for the WHO post-graduation. Another was learning that global NGOs sometimes use independent consultants to cover line work when they can’t hire full staff (which happens more often than they’re willing to admit).

A third factor was understanding just how quickly NGOs’ needs can change – and figuring out how to identify and seize work opportunities as new needs arose. In my case, that naivete I mentioned required me to build a picture of the immunization NGO scene from the ground up in order to understand my potential role in it.

I’d love to lay out everything I’ve learned, including the full history of the global immunization NGOs and their evolution toward the current landscape. But it’s not appropriate here, and it’s less than useful for those of you not interested in vaccines. Suffice to say that organizations such as Gavi and CEPI are mission-driven, highly impactful, and brimming with brilliant people whom I am incredibly lucky to count as colleagues.

What I will do is try to distill my experiences into a set of guidelines, to help you bridge the divide between your skills and the emergent needs of the global NGO community – or really, any employer. As it turns out, it’s an extension of an approach I took in grad school: observe, infer, and engage.

Observe

Find an organization doing something interesting and meaningful to you, and research the hell out of them. Look at all their job postings and RfPs, not just the ones that have an epi slant.

Ask fundamental questions about their mission, vision, and strategy – why does this organization exist? – then anchor your mindset to the world they work in. If you can, ask those questions to current employees – you’re bound to get some insightful answers informed by their personal experiences.

Infer

Apply inductive reasoning to what you learn about the organization. Your observations about what the NGO is doing, where, with whom, and why, will create a mental picture from which you can quickly infer organizational needs that may map to your skills.

Now, allow yourself to think big for a moment. Without targeting a specific job posting or title, think about what your ideal job in this organization would look like, both now and in five years. Be honest with yourself about what you can and can’t do now – but consider your full range of skills and experiences, not only those associated directly with epi. Make a list of the skills you lack but want to develop. This exercise helps shape your career trajectory into a practical narrative to share in an interview.

Finally, the hard part: identify opportunities to slot in. This is where you channel your big-picture ambition into a concrete career progression, with your target NGO as the first major step.

Unfortunately, most job postings won’t often immediately suggest a role for you; there wasn’t a single mention of epi skills in the first contract I took at Gavi. But if you parse job descriptions with an open mind, and think laterally about how to translate your epi background into adjacent fields or in unorthodox ways, you might suddenly find yourself screaming at the monitor: “I can do this!”

It’s all about context – which is why all the observational legwork is essential. If you know innately where an organization is, and where they’re headed and why, you’re already thinking along the lines of what they need and where you fit in.

Engage

Whether by traditional job application, introduction via a colleague, or a cold email – or, better yet, all three – put your best foot forward to the organization, and jam it in their door. Your objective is to familiarize your name and reputation for good work with them, one way or another (but always politely!).

Clearing the familiarity hurdle is harder with distant global NGOs than with, say, a state or local organization. But it remains a function of networking, timing, and yes, luck.

Be patient – job hunting is the ultimate test of patience – but utilize all the resources you have. Utilize your mentors; utilize your PIs; utilize your friends; utilize me. Be clear about your availability and adaptability to the needs of the work, and broadcast that to everyone who might help you get noticed.

If you score an interview, get the name of the hiring manager (not just the HR intermediary), and send a direct follow-up email. If you can’t find their address, maybe do what I did and email every permutation of their name you can think of until one gets through.

In the end, it was my thesis advisor who got me in the door at Gavi; a department head was his classmate at Hopkins, and had forwarded him the posting. From there, it was the usual CV/cover letter, then an interview, then that shot-in-the-dark follow-up email – then ten days later, I was packing my bags for Switzerland.

~~~

Once you land your first global NGO gig, be it a contract or a full-time job, the process has only begun. Continue to observe, infer, and engage, taking full advantage of your insider knowledge. For short-term contracts, the first thing to find out is whether your role was really intended to be temporary, or if there’s a long-term gap they’re trying to fill (they may not even realize the gap until you point it out).

Act accordingly with what you learn and with what you want from the organization, whether that’s the flexibility of continued short-term consultancies or the security of a full-time position with benefits – or a move to a different organization working in a similar space. Either way, congratulations – you’ve broken through!

In case you missed it, check out Breaking Into – and Surviving In – the Global NGO Sector: Part 1, where I shared my path from GLEPI student graduating at the height of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, to a full-blown career at an unexpected employer.

In Breaking Into – and Surviving In – the Global NGO Sector: Part 3, we’ll look at how cultivating strong leadership and teamwork skills can help you manage the dynamism of life and work at a global NGO, particularly in this time of emergent threats to public health – including, yes, COVID.

Roice Fulton, MPH (GLEPI, 2014) is currently an independent consultant for the London- and Oslo-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), where he manages projects in CEPI’s epidemiology portfolio. Roice currently lives and works near Geneva, Switzerland.

Tell an Influential Story

I recently submitted a grant application that proposed to develop a molecular profile to predict which breast cancers have high risk of recurring ten or more years after diagnosis. Here is the first paragraph of the application:

Imagine a 45 year-old premenopausal woman diagnosed with stage I, estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer. She, along with her partner and children, will face a year of surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, fear, and disruption of their day-to-day life. She completes her treatments and endocrine therapy, and recovers. She and her family are immensely grateful, and although those years remain a part of the family fabric, the fears diminish with time. Now imagine this same woman 20 years later. She is excited about life following retirement, especially the prospect of spending time with grandchildren, but her breast cancer recurs and these things will never come to pass. Her physicians tell her she did everything right, that there was no way to know that the tumor might recur so long after diagnosis, that it was just bad luck, and that even in 2020, no one can predict which breast cancers have this malevolent potential and which do not.

I am an epidemiologist proposing an epidemiology research project, so why did I start with a story about a single person?

Because it works.

I want the grant reviewers to feel empathy and sympathy for this woman and her family, and to read the grant in the frame of mind of wanting to help. To be influential, one must change minds. To change minds, those minds must be open to change. Data and evidence do not open minds; emotions open minds. Telling a poignant story about one person that illustrates the nature of the problem will open minds, and then these open minds might be receptive to the data and statistics.

We see this strategy of opening minds used frequently in public spaces. Politicians tell stories about people they meet on the campaign trail, and then they tell us the statistics that demonstrate the broader need and their policies for how to address them. News stories highlight the plight of a single person as a vehicle to convey the story. Presidents bring people to their State of the Union addresses and ask them to be recognized before launching into the statistics that describe the bigger problem and how the administration will address them. Religious texts are full of parables that faith leaders use to introduce a larger message. Why does everyone use this technique? Because it works. Once you recognize the method, you will see it used wherever you look.

And now that your mind may be open to the idea, here’s some science to back it up. In her book “The Influential Mind,” neuroscientist Tali Sharot says that evidence tends to be persuasive when it fits your world view. But if you are trying to change minds, then you are inevitably communicating with others who have a different world view. On average, when we encounter evidence that is inconsistent with our world view, we interpret that evidence as wrong. The further away the new evidence is from preexisting beliefs, the less likely it is to alter them. To be influential, you must first address and influence the emotional state of the audience (which can be one or many people). Helping them to get into the right frame of mind will improve your chances of changing their mind with evidence.

Our students are adept at collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data, with the goal of changing policies in ways that will improve public health. To be truly influential, though, we must all be prepared for resistance. Inherent in the idea of changing policies is the idea that we will have to change minds that are resistant. Using tools like the ones above to open those minds is as important a skill as the research skills.

Breaking Into – and Surviving In – the Global NGO Industry: Part 1

This is the first of a three part #PROspective series from alum Roice Fulton (GLEPI, 2014) on career paths with global NGOs and the creative application of epidemiology skills for public health practice. In Part 1, Roice shares his path from GLEPI student graduating at the height of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, to a full-blown career at an unexpected employer. In Part 2, the focus turns toward the nuts and bolts of the global NGO industry and how to navigate your own entry post-graduation. Finally, Part 3 will cover the role of teamwork and leadership in public health work. We hope this series will help stimulate a creative approach to the post-graduate job hunt and reiterate the broad applicability of your epidemiology skillset. Enjoy!

Part 1

So, full disclosure: I’m not what you might consider a practicing epidemiologist.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. The GLEPI program granted me a fantastic epi skillset, coupled with a few publications in vaccine research, all in two short years. With my 2014 cohort graduating amid the West African Ebola outbreak, there was ample opportunity to put those epi skills to work. Like many of my classmates, I’d planned on heading straight into the field, and had lined up as many interviews as I could to put myself into the mix.

Yet as Rollins’ newly minted epis went their separate ways, I quickly found myself at a crossroads. Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, had offered a short-term contract based at their Geneva headquarters to provide analytical support for their upcoming fundraising conference.

I’d done fundraising work in the past, but nowhere near the amount Gavi was targeting – a massive $7.5 billion to keep their programs going through 2020. But Gavi just needed someone who could conduct a variety of analyses to help their donors understand the impact of their investments in vaccines. Surely, I thought, between all the spreadsheet jockeying and SAS coding over my two years at Rollins, there was a toolset I could gin up to help Gavi get the resources they needed.

And so, instead of joining my friends in the field, I embarked on a journey as an independent consultant for Gavi. One contract led to another, and I found myself working on everything from fundraising analyses, to tech innovation initiatives, to program monitoring and evaluation.

In my three years at Gavi, I never so much as glanced at a 2×2 table or an epi curve. I’m working now with the epidemiology team at CEPI, Gavi’s new sister organization. And although I’m managing an epi study, I’m still not doing any hardcore epi work. So why in the world did I agree to write for an epi career advice blog?

I decided to write because I believe the lessons I learned in adapting my skills to the needs of my employers might help those of you looking to apply your own newly-acquired epi skills in unique ways. And in my experience, this sort of adaptability seems better suited to what organizations like Gavi and CEPI are looking for in their new employees – particularly as they leave much of the epidemiological heavy lifting to groups like WHO and academic partners.

Frankly, if I couldn’t find a way to channel my epi (and other) skills into a non-epi work product, my career at Gavi would’ve been over before it started. Surviving the first few months would have been much more difficult without the gifts of an analytical background and enough tenacity to spend hours buried in spreadsheets working against hard deadlines. Likewise, succeeding at CEPI meant quickly learning the contours of a complex and ambitious scientific study in a region fraught with difficulties from poor infrastructure to political instability. The work can be intimidating, but the payoff is tremendous – both in personal satisfaction and in human impact.

It’s been more than five years since I first set foot in Geneva. Since then, I’ve gradually developed an understanding of the global NGO community that suggests a wealth of opportunities exist for aspiring young epidemiologists and public health practitioners.

As I figure out my own place in this community, my hope is to identify – and create – such opportunities for you all, just as my mentors did for me. More than ever, we need talented, passionate young thinkers to shepherd the global health and development community into the next era. And more than ever, we need a diversity of perspectives to inform how we can build strong, evidence-based global health interventions. This is where you come in.

You’ve already got a leg up on the competition. Each of you will leave Rollins with an analytical and lateral mindset holding immense potential value to the global NGO ecosystem. But the complex and changing needs of these organizations will rarely perfectly match up with your classwork – so we need to dig deeper to learn how to unlock that potential.

As we’ll explore in Part 2, standing out from the sea of candidates will depend both on how well you understand the global NGO you’d like to work for – and how you can demonstrate adaptability in, and compatibility with, a dynamic work environment.

Roice Fulton, MPH (GLEPI, 2014) is currently an independent consultant for the London- and Oslo-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), where he manages projects in CEPI’s epidemiology portfolio. Roice currently lives and works near Geneva, Switzerland.

Internships: Not just about fulfilling the APE requirement

The second semester is already off to a strong start – 2^nd year students are diligently working on their Thesis and Capstone projects (and maybe wrapping up those core course requirements!), and 1^st year students are immersed in causal inference, more advanced statistics, and designing & implementing epidemiologic studies. Now that we’ve finally settled into the routine of the new semester, we wanted to shed more light on one of the next milestones that our 1^st year students are approaching: identifying an Applied Practice Experience. To our seasoned 2^nd year students: we’d love to hear what you’d add to this conversation! Keep an eye out for this topic to surface on Twitter, and feel free to add the ways you made the most of your Applied Practice Experiences! 

There are so many things that I love about Rollins (please don’t make me pick!) – but one thing that nears the top of my list is our Applied Practice Experience (APE) and the vast network of organizations that welcome our students each year. You may have heard this from me before, but my motivation for pursuing a career in public health was driven by wanting to make a difference. The reason why I love the APE so much is that it affords our students the opportunity to make their mark on public health even before graduation.

While some 1^st year students are well on their way to identifying an APE, most are in the early phases of thinking about how their APE might take shape. As you begin researching opportunities, I urge you to think big so that you can use this opportunity as more than a way to proverbially “check the box” on this degree requirement.

Q: Did your personal statement outline your passion for studying inequities in birth outcomes, but now you can’t learn enough about the novel coronavirus?

First – you must know that this is very typical in the life of a Rollins student! One of my favorite moments from a recruitment event was hearing a GLEPI student say that his “research interests were aligned with whatever [he] learned about during the last seminar [he] attended.” There is so much great work happening in and around Rollins, and there is no shortage of important public health topics to tackle! Take advantage of your APE as a low-stakes way to test the waters in a new topic area.

Q: Did you come to Rollins because you wanted to soak in all that our neighbors at the CDC have to offer, with the hope of landing a job there after graduation?

Many students are drawn to the Rollins School of Public Health due to our proximity to the CDC, and lots of students complete their APE with a wide range of teams across the agency. The APE affords students an inside look at the work environment of their chosen organization. You might find out that your dream job really is at the CDC, or you might find that the work environment isn’t the fit that you thought it would be. Learning what doesn’t suit your strengths and interests can be just as informative as learning what does.   

Q: It’s all about the Epi, right?

Well, not quite! While you will hopefully get a chance to apply your classroom knowledge and skillset during this experience – don’t forget that your APE is also going to test your soft skills and ability to navigate new workplace politics and dynamics. Maybe this means you will have your first opportunity to ask your manager for feedback, test new time-management techniques, navigate generational differences in the workplace, or find ways to translate the stress into focus. These techniques are just as valuable to an early career epidemiologist as experience with methods and their practical application and I encourage you to keep these ideas close at hand during your APE. 

Q: Are you nervous about navigating the job market after graduation?

Thinking about next steps after graduate studies can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be! You can use the entire Applied Practice Experience process – from start to finish – as a way to prepare for your next steps. The interview process will afford you greater confidence when you are ready to apply for fulltime positions after graduation [NOTE: you may wish to revisit Dr. Lash’s PROspective piece on making a good first impression]. Some students are able to continue working with their APE organization upon completion of the degree requirement, and are even hired full-time upon graduation. If you’d like to pivot to a different area (see above!), your APE supervisor may be willing to serve as a reference for you during your job search.

No matter what APE you choose, I urge you to seize every opportunity that you can to learn from these practicing public health professionals. Keep an eye out for ways in which you are gaining and applying those professional skills and foster good relationships with those you encounter along the way. This will set you apart in the applicant pool as you demonstrate that you have what it takes to be an influential public health professional. We cannot wait to hear how you choose to use the Applied Practice Experience to make your mark on public health!

Interested in more ways that the Applied Practice Experience can expand your horizons? Check out this short article for some additional thoughts!

The EPI-Curious Society

This PROspective is a love story about books, fascinating people and topics that matter.  Have you ever had the chance to share one of your favorite activities with some of your favorite people and then have really interesting conversations on topics you are passionate about while you are doing it?  For me, this beautiful spot where these collide has a new name – The EPI-Curious Society.

“I am always thrilled to find a great read and love to talk about what I have read, particularly when it moves me or changes the way I think.“

I love to read and have for as long as I can remember. When I was in elementary school, my mom would tell me I had to go outside to play during the summer instead of sitting in my room reading. She was truly trying to limit my reading time!  So I packed my books and outside I went… to read. 

“There is no doubt that sharing books together and challenging the way we think has deepened my understanding of the stories of life.”

These days, I spend a lot of time reading papers but I still carve out time for books and have become quite enamored with audio books I can listen to in my car or while cooking. I am always thrilled to find a great read and love to talk about what I have read, particularly when it moves me or changes the way I think.  Some of my closest friends are my six book club buddies. We have been together reading, debating, traveling and supporting each other in life for 20 years. There is no doubt that sharing books together and challenging the way we think has deepened my understanding of the stories of life.

“Our students are passionate, good humans who are engaged and interested.”

Next we add in our Emory Epidemiology students. Wow. I really am inspired by them and the way they think, their experiences, and the questions they ask. Our students are passionate, good humans who are engaged and interested. It’s a gift to know them and I was truly getting a bit blue thinking of them moving on and out of EPI530. We had spent a semester talking about the vaping crisis or the latest NPR story all while learning and growing in knowledge about epidemiology and I was not ready to have our conversations end.

So here comes the leap. Would you be willing to give up your lunch time to join me to talk about books? The response was exciting and two wonderful student leaders came forward to help set this up. Being researchers, we quickly surveyed for interest, best day of the week, book suggestions, and a name for our new book club. With the blend of a couple name suggestions, The EPI-Curious Society was born, a book was picked, and the date was set for our first meeting. 

“Learning from our past and talking about our different perspectives is fundamental to doing good work.“

Our first book, ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ by Rebecca Skloot has led to a fascinating discussion about research ethics,racial inequities, the individual people affected by research, and the strides made for public health. Learning from our past and talking about our different perspectives is fundamental to doing good work.       

The EPI-Curious Society now gets top billing as one of my favorite things. 

What do you get when you spend lunch discussing the ethics of human subjects research, social inequities & medical advancements with a dedicated group of @EmoryEPI superstars? The #Epicurioussociety bookclub! What a treat to be reunited with these students. ?#readingforfun pic.twitter.com/cP4XofBAgr

— Jodie L. Guest (@Jlguest) January 22, 2020

If you are a current EPI student and would like to join the EPI-Curious Society, please email sarah [dot] johnson2 [at] emory [dot] edu to be added to our listserv for information about meetings and books.

To build your list of interesting books, several faculty in the Department of Epidemiology have also created a list of their top reads from the past year, which are presented below:

Educated, A memoir

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

The Book of Why

The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others

Thinking Fast, and Slow

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

Just Mercy

The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy

The Sun Does Shine

An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business

Dying of Whiteness

Even on your worst day, you can be a student’s best hope

What were your favorite books of 2019? Tell us in the comments below!

Didn’t see something here that caught your eye? Browse some of our favorite book lists from the last year:

• NYT 100 Notable books of 2019 
• NPR’s Book Concierge
• Bill Gates 2019 Book list

Keep Calm and …

The two most important things I learned as an undergraduate were: (a) I can do a lot in 24 hours, far more than I had realized and far more than many people ever realize, and (b) I can only do a lot in 24 hours if I keep calm while doing it. The ability to work well under pressure is critical to career success, and can be learned. Today’s PROspective article provides ten concrete suggestions for how to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure, which has a direct link to your wellbeing and to the quality of your performance.

There are a few aspects of this reading that resonate most strongly with me. First is the idea that some stress is normative. As the article states: “Our brains are wired such that it’s difficult to take action until we feel at least some level of this emotional state.” Accepting the feelings that come with intermittent moderate stress as motivational is a first step in turning it to your advantage.

Second, it is important to develop a reliable and healthy coping strategy that you can turn to when stress rises. Knowing that you have a solution provides relief from the aspects of stress that might prevent you from performing, and allows you to channel the stress towards achievement.

For me, the advice to disconnect rings true. I do not work well in the evening, so very seldom even try. I look forward to that time at home with my family, or to play guitar, or to read and watch TV (music documentaries are my latest guilty pleasure). I always have work I could be doing; not doing it reminds me that I am in control, and feeling in control is an important defense against stress.

Learning to use stress to your advantage is healthy and will give you a competitive edge. Like many career skills, it requires introspection and a commitment to being intentional about the goal. This week’s reading will give you some foundational knowledge as a place to start.

Year In Review

2019 was the inaugural year for PROspective – one that has been full of wisdom and insights from both faculty and alumni. This week we take a walk down memory lane to review our top 5 most-read articles from 2019 (in no particular order):

#EpiTwitter: Professional engagement in the 21st century

In our very first article (ever!), Dr. Cecile Janssens introduced us to #EpiTwitter and the wealth of value that comes from having access to an online community of students, teachers, and professionals at your fingertips. 

The quote:

“Over time, I connected with many people who have similar interests but who I would never have met in person because we attend different conferences. Physicians, statisticians, policy experts, patient advocates, and journalists. Slowly but steadily, I expanded my network across disciplines. Twitter is now my favorite ‘annual’ conference, every day.”  

Public Speaking

Science is hard for a lot of reasons, but at the top of that list is that science involves a lot of scrutiny – of data, of methods, and… of presentation. In one of our favorite articles of 2019, Dr. Jodie Guest told us about her experience grappling with the challenges of public speaking. 

The quote:

“”Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.” The best speakers are really storytellers even if they are talking about science or a mathematical model.  This is what connects to people and will help them remember what you have presented.”

Get to ‘Yes’

In sports, it has been said (maybe a few too many times) that “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”. In the professional world, things aren’t so different. In Get to ‘Yes’, Dr. Timothy Lash gave us a strategy for nailing that shot – making use of our innate human tendencies, like the desire for reciprocity.

The quote:

“Ask in person, and offer something in return. These two principles rest on fundamentals of human interactions. People are more likely to agree to help when asked in person, not by text, email, or telephone. In addition, offering something in return shows respect for the other person’s time and effort.”

Setbacks (not Failures)

Did I mention that science is hard? Let me reiterate: it’s hard – and that means that consistent success is never guaranteed. In Setbacks (not Failures), Dr. Lauren Christiansen-Lindquist helps us reframe the personal and professional challenges inherent in our work, taking a larger view of our journey as scientists. 

The quote:

“The word “failure” sounds so final and evokes imagery of a dead end, where there’s little hope to move forward. It helps me to think of these setbacks as speed bumps, rather than closed roads. Sure, they’ve slowed me down, but they have not, and will not, halt my progress.”

Professional Feedback

While the days of primary school report cards are long gone, evaluation and feedback are still a crucial part of our personal and professional development. Nowadays, that probably comes in the form of monthly check-ins or formal bi-annual reviews. Last, but certainly not least, we heard from Elizabeth Hannapel, MPH (Alum, 2012) about the value of professional feedback and how to incorporate both the good and the bad with tact and grace.

The quote:

“On-the-job training, and the corresponding evaluation processes, should reflect not only job-specific tasks but also the interpersonal skills that enable staff to navigate complex professional environments. “

From all of us at the Confounder – thanks for reading, and we hope to share a lot more insight and PROspective in the new year!