As a kid growing up outside of Atlanta, Gibril Njie (MPH ‘11, DrPH ‘21) was a lot of things – curious, bookish, a math lover, but also a talented athlete and sports geek. He aspired to be a dentist.

Then life took him down another path that led to where he is now, a senior epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leading the Atlanta-based Global Tobacco Surveillance System from Zimbabwe.

It’s enough to give anyone whiplash, but Gibril has always rolled with the punches. Flexibility, he says, is key to a successful career in public health. “That's the beauty of public health. Most of the skills you're going to learn in public health are transferable,” he said.

If you asked Christina Proctor to describe herself in just a few words, it would be lifelong learner.

And as a clinical assistant professor in the UGA College of Public Health, each day brings something new to learn.

“As an instructor, you can never stop learning. There’s always something new to find out. There are new methods to teach students. There are new groups of students that come in, and I love that challenge of figuring out what’s the best way to get this group of students to connect to this material, to connect to each other,” she said.

Jose Cordero had seen the news reports. When the lingering bands of Hurricane Maria finally gave way to blue skies, the enormity of the storm’s impact on the island of Puerto Rico was laid bare.

Beginning in the southeast corner of the island, the storm had slowly crawled across the land, dumping unprecedented amounts of rain and battering homes with 155 mile per hour sustained winds.

Puerto Rico was devasted.

As soon as the first non-emergency flights could return to the island, Cordero, Patel Distinguished Professor of Public Health and head of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics, was on one.

From 6 a.m.–noon, six days a week, you can find Clancy Bolton at work on his farm in Commerce, about 20 miles north of Athens.

Farming is part of Bolton’s heritage, so it may not be a surprise that at age 23, when his peers were going into office jobs, he decided to start a farm of his own in 2014.

Today, his age still surprises people, but the number belies his years of experience. Bolton has been running a tractor since he was 12, and he’s worked on several farms, including four years at a large organic farm.