Journey to Public Health

In high school, Dr. Nicole Cook was a top cross-country runner, editor of her high school newspaper and she worked at a department store. Dr. Cook didn’t think strategically about college and applied to the best one she thought she could get admitted into, without thinking about specific programs or interests. When Dr. Cook started college, she tried everything– archeology, art history, philosophy, performing arts, Chinese radio, but she could not find her “niche”. To her undergraduate self she would offer the following advice: challenge yourself, don’t be afraid to take a class that is difficult and outside your comfort zone. Also, think about a future career that you will like early in your undergraduate studies. After college, she went abroad working in a development town with Moroccan immigrants in Israel during the first Persian Gulf War. Though she loved this time, Dr. Cook would tell her younger self to take a bigger risk and join the Peace Core. During her presentation, she will speak about how she went from waitress to secretary to health administrator to university faculty. Then, I will discuss how she “fell” into a master’s program and, later, “fell in love” with epidemiology. Finally, Dr. Cook will spend a few minutes speaking about professional/personal choices that shaped her career decisions