management going into her internship. “But the daily issues that come up when running a one- or two-person health center in a remote village are hard to imagine until you’ve seen them up close,” she said. “More than interviews with staff or reviews of facility records, simply observing the rhythms of the clinics, the comings and goings of patients and friends, the role clinics play in villages of a few hundred people, and the innovative problem-solving of the staff taught me so much about leadership, management and resilience. Those observations provided a crash course in the business of healthcare at the most decentralized level, where people’s critical, basic needs are met.” Those experiences in Cameroon – coupled with Ahmed’s other international experiences through U-M in Cambodia, Bangladesh and Senegal – continue to inspire her in her current role at the CDC. Today, she is engaged in all aspects of policy, planning, strategy and coordination of the agency’s work in Haiti while maintaining contact with staff at the organization’s headquarters in Atlanta. She also interacts with other entities in government, including USAID and the departments of state, defense and treasury, and global partners such as the World Bank, World Health Organization and the Global Fund. Ahmed said she often reflects on “the twists and turns of fate” that brought her to Haiti, including her WDI internship in Cameroon. That experience, she said, helped ground her in the realities of global health, policy and development, and gave her insight into various ways of thinking about issues across cultures and professions. She acknowledged that her globetrotting ways are not for everyone, and that living and working overseas can be lonely, isolating and exhausting. But it also can be rewarding, stimulating and enlightening. In the end, she said, “You never know if living and working abroad, with its new situations and cultures, is for you until you try it. “When I was a student at U-M applying for internships, I never would have imagined that I would be trudging through muddy, washed-out roads in the forests along the Cameroonian-Nigerian border having just helped deliver, in a one-room health clinic, a baby named after me,” she said. “That fact alone is proof that you never know what’s in store for your life and career. It’s something I think about to this day.” 25th Anniversary 65