This Historian Left a Tenured Job for a Career in Policy

Shortly after I moved to New England in 1996 to start a job as an assistant professor of history, two colleagues invited me to their house for dinner. A handful of other new or junior faculty members were there, too, and at one point the conversation turned to what each of us might have done had we not found suitable jobs in academe.

Several around the table said they could not imagine doing anything different — that becoming a professor had been their long-held dream.

As my turn to contribute approached, I thought wistfully about a letter I had received from a women’s health organization inviting me to interview for a posting in Chile. My dissertation focused on gender, reformism, and public health in early 20th-century Mexico, and I was interested in how to apply my research to more contemporary debates in other parts of Latin America. I had written to the organization in January, but the interview request came only after I had already accepted the teaching position at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. By then, my classes had been scheduled, movers arranged, and travel plans made, so I brushed aside thoughts of Santiago and focused on preparing to teach at a public university.

That night at dinner, as my mind scrambled to come up with an answer that didn’t paint me as a complete misfit in academe, the conversation luckily moved to other topics, and I didn’t have to confess my professional doubts. But my interest in policy issues was always there, that night and for years after.

When the chance to formally study reproductive-health policy came in the form of a one-year fellowship at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, I eagerly pursued it. A few years later, after I had been tenured at UMass-Amherst, I accepted a fellowship at the U.S. State Department, working on global health issues including HIV/AIDS, polio eradication, and biodefense. After that, the department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs hired me on a year-to-year civil-service consulting contract.

Discovering that I was energized by the work — advancing access to health services globally — I eventually resigned my faculty position. For the next few years I remained at State, before joining a think tank and later developing my own policy consulting practice. ...