MyMai Yuan
MPH ’23 Health Management
She/her/hers
A metaphor spoke to me during a time in my life when I was thinking deeply about my purpose: To find our “dream job,” we must find the egg yolk. That is, we should base our search not on job descriptions out there, but by considering the parts of our own experience we cherished. In this way, we find the core values that drive our explorations.
Born and raised in Thailand, I attended an international English-speaking high school. My trilingual background, the cultural diversity of my social bubble, and the striking economic disparities of my country drew me to people’s stories. At school, I started a spoken poetry movement on the healing nature of community storytelling.
I came to the U.S. for the first time in my life to pursue my undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where I majored in both cognitive neuroscience and creative writing. Both fields enabled deeper exploration into the humanity of health. While cognitive neuroscience delves into the tissue of memory, creative writing dissects the power of our inherent mortality through the language of grief and love. The privilege of an empowering education affirmed my dream of building more equitable care in Thailand and other low-to-middle-income countries.
In preparation for my hopes of working in resource-constrained settings, I spent two years at a New York-based health care management consulting firm where I worked on projects looking at chronic illnesses and health care innovation. As I gained financial skills and language in the private sector, I realized the core importance of public health.
With this knowledge, I moved back home to Thailand and joined an international public health non-governmental organization (NGO). There, I co-led a global health project to reduce non-communicable diseases and support Thailand’s COVID-19 response. This role and the compassion of my colleagues shaped me profoundly. While witnessing the inequities of COVID-19 across populations, I dove into global health’s history and the political economy that has shaped it. There, I created a protocol exploring ways for project members to share the historical context of the countries in which we worked, prioritizing language and cultural inclusivity. I recognized that such a protocol treats only the symptoms of a deep-rooted issue.
That year, I made the difficult (and very lucky) decision to defer medical school and, instead, pursue public health at Harvard Chan. I was drawn to the global impact and socio-economic-political lens of public health, which I felt was crucially lacking in the world’s COVID-19 response. I was particularly drawn to Dr. Jesse Bump’s work in the history of global political economies and decolonizing global health, and a previously hosted student-led conference, “Decolonizing Global Health.”
Today, I work as a research assistant and teaching fellow with Dr. Bump; an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) fellow; and co-founder of the student organization “Harvard Chan Students for Decolonizing Global Health.” My research interests also include global health economics, financing, and payment systems. I am so grateful for the conversations I’ve been able to have with my peers here, and how much I’ve learned from them.
My passion for the humanity of health continues as a Harvard Chan student. Though my path has had many curves, my time here has helped me continue to define the “yolk” that connects everything I have explored. The students, mentors, and professors at Harvard have deepened my understanding of global health equity, and I am thankful to share with them an affinity to build a more just world.
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