Public health degree leads to emergency response management opportunities

After graduating from Falk College in 2014 with a degree in Public Health, Jennifer Molina joined the Peace Corps and traveled to Guatemala as a maternal and child health volunteer. One of her major accomplishments was developing, implementing, and evaluating a six-month behavior change seminar with local health professionals. She also organized a health coalition, led by volunteers, to develop an emergency birth plan to prevent maternal death during childbirth. That experience awakened an interest in emergency management and led her to work as an emergency management specialist with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).

At the GSA, she coordinated the reconstitution of the federal government in the event of an emergency, as well as support the recovery efforts of FEMA’s Logistics team. Her team won Federal Employee of the Year for its dedication to GSA and all federal agencies after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2017. “I personally spent two months deployed working with FEMA and GSA’s deployment teams,” says Molina.

“I still remember that day when I walked into my professor’s office asking to be a public health major. Full disclosure I had no idea what public health was until I got to Syracuse and it just seemed like the perfect fit for me after I talked to her.”