2023-2024 Fellows
Brandon Christophe
Brandon Christophe is a 2nd year in the Health Policy and Management department studying in the Part-time Masters of Health Administration program. He initially began his professional career as a staff researcher in the Department of Neurological Surgery studying neurovascular disease. He has spent the last several years in operations and analytics, currently working as a Senior Business Analyst at Columbia University and as an independent consultant focusing on analytics-driven healthcare strategy. His professional skills have been put to use in the Mailman Consulting practice course where he worked with a national value-based care provider to enhance operational strategy to support provider retention. Brandon has participated in club activities of Columbia Healthcare Ventures and has been selected for the upcoming Tow Doctoral Scholars Pilot Program. His academic interests have long focused on the intersection of technology and healthcare and its application toward expanding healthcare access and equity for patients and their support networks. He hopes to continue pursuing those interests after graduation. Brandon has been recognized for his work towards building equity in his personal, academic, and professional life through mentoring. He was drawn to the FORWARD Fellows program by the opportunity to work, in a structured and focused way, towards the FORWARD mission of transforming CUIMC into an antiracist, multicultural, and fully inclusive institution. He hopes to have an impactful and educational experience as a fellow in the FORWARD program.
Olamide Fagbamiye
Olamide Fagbamiye is a 2nd-year master’s in public health candidate at Mailman School of Public Health in the Health Policy and Management Department with a certificate in Social Determinants of Health. He aspires to become a healthcare administrator with a focus on Population and Community Health and Operations. Throughout his professional career, Olamide has understood and implemented health equity interventions and hopes to continue to do so. During his summer Applied Practice Experience (APEx), he interned with the Greater New York Hospital Association and was placed at One Brooklyn Health (OBH) under the guidance and mentorship of Dr. Torian Easterling, the Senior Vice President of Population and Community Health at OBH. While at OBH, Olamide was able to work on intervention programming and community health assessment planning for the Central and East Brooklyn community. He is a member of the Black & Latinx Student Caucus, a student associate of the American College of Healthcare Executives, and a member of the Black Health Connect network. As an individual with a passion for change, health equity, and anti-racism, Olamide decided to apply to the FORWARD Fellows program as an indication that he believed it was his time to give back and engage in the fight against anti-racism in our communities. He hopes that through this opportunity he can not only be a light to others but also tell narratives that are often overlooked and create connections in areas that need them.
Rose Monet P. Little
Rose Monet P. Little is a second-year Master of Public Health student studying Sociomedical Science, with a certificate in Health Communication. Born and raised in the rural city of Bakersfield, CA, she grew up within a multicultural community where she found her passion for advocating for people within the healthcare system. She earned a bachelor's degree in microbiology from UC Riverside; after graduation she went into the workforce to strengthen her medical and patient-centered skills. She additionally went abroad to Switzerland and Spain to work on a service research project with UNICEF and observe international health systems alongside medical techniques. While at Mailman, she has worked as a preceptor for State Pre-College Enrichment Program (S-PREP) teaching high school students, volunteers as a health educator for Project STAY, serves as a R.I.S.E. (Resilience, Inclusion, Solidarity, and Empowerment) peer mentor, and is an active member within the Black & Latinx Student Caucus. As a FORWARD Fellow, Rose Monet hopes to build on the social sciences and health communication curriculum to enhance course content to address the vulnerability underrepresented students face from structural and institutional racism.
Moza Mendes
Moza is a second-year Master of Public candidate in the Department of Health Policy and Management, with a certificate in Environmental Health Policy. Outside of her academic studies at Mailman, Moza is a TA, tutor, and a student leader of multiple Columbia mentorship programs for students of color, such as the Black and Latinx Student Caucus and R.I.S.E. (Resilience, Inclusion, Solidarity, and Empowerment).
For her APEx, Moza was a Graduate Research Assistant with the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, where she worked on health system resiliency and training for disaster response. Moza is also a Fellow at the NY Birth Control Access Project where she focuses on fundraising, activism, and policy to increase access to contraception in New York State.
Moza’s passions and career goals are centered around community health and improving health outcomes for BIPOC communities. From her personal history of living in four countries, Moza has a global perspective that has been strengthened through her equity work, she aims to use her international background and experiences for a career that eliminates barriers to healthcare through increased education, racial justice, and advocacy.
As a FORWARD Fellow Moza hopes to instill diversity, equity, and inclusion frameworks in public health curriculums to bridge the disconnect between the healthcare system and its most vulnerable patients. The FORWARD program could help Moza advance public health to move away from curing symptoms of chronic social problems, to understanding and resolving the root issues of health outcomes brought on by social inequality.
Joelle Mentis
Joelle Mentis is a second year MPH student in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences with a certificate in the social determinants of health. Prior to Mailman, she received her Bachelor's of Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College with a concentration in nonfiction writing and public health. Her interests include social theory and research methods, and she is particularly interested in weight-stigma. This past summer she completed an internship with a stigma-informed metabolic health clinic, where she interrogated the use of patient reported outcomes measures in patients with obesity. She critiqued existing validated questionnaires for their limited cultural versatility, ultimately identifying broader domains of interest related to the social determinants of health and particularly, stigma. As the field of obesity medicine is historically biased to believe that patients are responsible for their weight, she finds that encouraging researchers to consider weight stigma as a medically important social force enables practitioners to intervene more effectively. Joelle has also interned with the Social Emotional Learning Alliance of Massachusetts as a policy and advocacy intern, as well as the Galavante in the World Foundation, where she assisted with humanitarian aid efforts in Afghanistan. Joelle’s approach to public health is one that led her to the FORWARD fellowship. She believes that population-wide poor health outcomes develop at the root of social inequity, which must be targeted with institutionally focused programs such as FORWARD. Additionally, Joelle was drawn to the FORWARD program for the opportunity to engage with other critical thinkers.
Caroline O’Connor
Caroline O’Connor is a second year MPH candidate in the Epidemiology department with a certificate in Child, Youth, and Family Health. This past summer, she was a part of the Massachusetts Department of Health’s Local Health Internship Program for her APEx experience. It was there she was able to run a community health needs assessment for the North Shore region of MA for the creation of targeted intervention. She also worked as a Youth Development Manager for the non-profit organization The Food Project. It was there she was in charge of their introductory youth programming and facilitating curriculum on social and food justice for 52 teenagers from the Greater Boston area. On the Mailman campus, she is the Social Media Manager for the Columbia Health Dispatch and is a Working Group Leader for the Student Well-Being Collective. Caroline was drawn to the FORWARD Fellows program because of the opportunity to use her experiences of benefiting from societal structures to build a platform where members of the Columbia community feel empowered. She hopes that this platform can allow those impacted the space to share experiences that are rooted in oppression, to talk about the ways Columbia can support them better and be a part of the solution to fix these issues.
Janelle Micaela S. Panganiban
Janelle (she/her) is a second-year MPH candidate at the Department of Health Policy and Management pursuing a Certificate in Health Policy Analysis. She is also a Communications Associate with the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion at Mailman. This summer, she worked as a Consulting Intern at Alvarez & Marsal’s Healthcare Industry Group.
Before attending graduate school, Janelle worked in the fields of health systems strategy and health services research in New York and Manila. Through her professional experience, she implemented key COVID-19 response initiatives and supported research to improve access to mental health and primary care services in the Philippines. Janelle earned her bachelor’s degree in Global Public Health, Public Policy, and Sociology from New York University. Outside school and work, Janelle enjoys running, journaling, introducing friends to Filipino food, taking nature breaks, and watching live music.
Janelle is excited to be a FORWARD Fellow for this school year. Her experience as a Filipino international student has motivated her to be a concrete part of anti-racist and equity-building work. In her professional and academic endeavors, Janelle has made it a point to initiate or engage in DEI initiatives and conduct equity-focused research. To continue this work, she is honored to have been chosen for the FORWARD Fellows program at Mailman. She remains dedicated to being a part of concrete solutions that go beyond acknowledgment and dialogue, which the FORWARD Fellows program offers.
Fola Wilson
Fola Wilson (she/they) is a second-year Master of Public Health Candidate in the Department of Health Policy and Management with a certificate in Sexuality, Sexual Health, and Reproductive Health. During undergraduate, they attended Howard University, where they studied how political systems have generated and amplified health disparities for Black and LGBTQ populations. Professionally, Fola is interested in evaluating barriers to maternal, sexual, and reproductive health care and developing sustainable policy solutions that center marginalized communities. During their practicum, they interned at the NYC Commission on Gender Equity, where they conducted policy analysis through a reproductive justice and intersectional lens. This academic year, Fola will be interning with SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, tracking and analyzing sex education legislation. At Mailman, she is the treasurer of the Mailman Black and Latinx Student Caucus, an organization committed to providing academic, professional, and social opportunities to empower Black and Latinx students. She also supports survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence at Columbia’s Sexual Violence Response. Fola was drawn to the Forward Fellowship because she wanted to gain experience using research to develop anti-racist and sustainable initiatives. She is excited to collaborate with students, faculty, and community members to create a digital archive that embraces the public health servants of the Washington Heights community.