When entering the non-profit world you expect low pay, little to no thanks, and to not get enticed to organizations with fancy dinners; but you expect to get fulfillment and joy and the knowledge that you are working towards something greater than yourself. Absolutely all of those things are true. However, I also got to discover conference season this year; and that is an amazing part of this world I hadn’t really understood.
I am from LA, specifically Hollywood, so I know all about awards season; those few months where celebrities flock to LA or NYC or wherever in the US the VMAs were that year. It causes traffic with limos and unnecessary craziness and affluence beyond compare topped with gift bags from all the places that normal people can’t afford. I have always hated awards season. However, ‘conference season’… that is something entirely different. It started out simple with hour-long events at the UN, which escalated to daylong lists of amazing panels, to the infamous two day Women in the World (complete with Diane von Furstenberg after party), to a weekend at Yale for Unite For Sight, to a 4 day extravaganza at Women Deliver in Malaysia. This whirlwind of amazing women and men and panels and sessions is like nothing I could have ever imagined.
I loved college, I had amazing classes and life changing professors, but I don’t think I have ever been so inspired as I have felt during and after all of these events. After the first day and night of Women in the World I was bouncing off the walls with excitement. I truly couldn’t contain myself, and the explanation of whom I saw and the amazing things that were going on in the world became a jumbled mess of words that I couldn’t get out of my mouth fast enough. I witnessed legends speak, and history being made, in a field that I couldn’t be more passionate about.
I keep up with both the domestic and international news, and it is always so depressing. All we hear about is the genocide, murders, kidnappings (luckily with occasional happy endings), political and social unrest, disease and poverty. It is so rare that we hear about all the truly amazing things that people all over the world are doing every day. These conferences gave me the opportunity to get back every bit of hope that I have ever lost over the years struggling with the uphill battle that is poverty, gender inequity, and generally public health in general.
I have grown up around amazing women because of my mom and mothers2mothers. I am used to attending functions with my mom and speaking to anyone who will listen about the amazing strides that m2m has made in the HIV/AIDS world, and I am used to all of the praise I hear while with her because of her accomplishments. However, because of GHC, I had an experience with her that I had never been able to experience before. I attended Unite for Sight with my mom in April, and after a panel that she sat on, she and the other panelists sat on the edge of the stage of the largest theater in the event and fielded questions from the packed room for an hour. Normally I sit next to her and smile and soak in the advice she gives to all the public health hopefuls about m2m, how she got to where she is, and what their next steps should be. This time however, because I am a Global Health Corps Fellow, I too sat with my legs dangling off the stage next to her, fielding questions of my own. People were interested in what I was doing as a GHC fellow and how I managed to get there and what I was going to do next. They were impressed with what I was doing right out of college, and not just what it has been like being my mother’s daughter.
So I want to take this opportunity to thank GHC for sending me to these amazing conferences where I get to hear about the spectacular things men and women around the world are doing, for giving me the inspiration to continue on the hard path of international public health. But I also want to thank this amazing fellowship for showing me that I can hold my own this is crazy world and that I have the ability to sit on the edge of the stage answer questions, not just sit in the audience asking them.