My work

I work to identify and advocate for federal policy options to ensure that mental health is incorporated into preventive health care. In other words, we want to see pediatricians, family physicians, and other primary care providers offer a mental health screen to adolescents when they come in for a well-visit. The over-arching goal is to prevent death and disability due to mental illness.

How a Kenyon education helped

A liberal arts education teaches you to look for and make connections that may not be obvious. This skill has allowed me flexibility in my professional growth. Although all of my jobs have been in the field of health care policy, each one has focused on a unique aspect of the policy making process, from political fund-raising, to lobbying legislators, to drafting white papers on policy issues.

No position has transitioned obviously from one to the next; each has required that I draw on related, but not necessarily equivalent, experiences. My liberal arts education prepared me very well for this task, which has become more important than ever as individuals have begun to change employers and positions more frequently throughout their careers.

Job highlight

I love that I get paid to follow, analyze, and engage on issues—like the health care reform debate—that I am interested in on a personal level. I have always loved politics and the legislative process, and I grew up listening to my father, a pediatrician, talk about how the health care system could be improved. It's been incredibly satisfying to combine these two interests professionally.

Why Kenyon?

The small class sizes at Kenyon meant that I was often pushed outside of my comfort zone. I was one of a small number of Russian students, and I came to know Professor Natalia Olshanskaya very well. She encouraged me—pushed me, really—to pursue honors in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, which I did successfully. This prepared me to research, present, and defend a paper effectively (in a foreign language, no less). This skill has proven helpful in my graduate studies, as well as my career, and it has had the happy effect of making my work in the English language seem easy by comparison.