Hello, my name is Noah Coenraets, I was born and raised in Boston, in a multicultural and bilingual household. I will be a junior at Pitt in the fall, and I am pursuing a dual degree program with a Bachelor of Science in Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy, along with a certificate in global health and a minor in French. I am interested in how policy can shape the health and livelihoods of people in different populations globally. Policy level changes can greatly impact the availability of medical professionals, pharmaceutical interventions, and adequate health infrastructure. I would like to make the world a more equitable place by working to bring access to health care to regions that are traditionally overlooked and under-resourced. Professionally, I aim to work for large non-governmental organizations or intergovernmental organizations, advising and consulting on the adoption and implementation of large scale health based interventions.
On campus, I am involved in work involving activism and community building; I am a member of the Black Men’s Collective, where students meet to share experiences, resources, and connections with the goal of supporting the professional, academic, and social success of students of color. In addition to this I am involved in the Caribbean Student Association, where I not only get to share my culture and language with other students, but I also get to learn about others as well. My personal interests include shopping and fashion, as the way a person dresses is a way to express yourself silently, along with music and food because they are great ways to share culture and start a meaningful conversation. In my free time, I enjoy weightlifting and going on runs, and exploring new areas with my friends.
This summer, I am participating in the international internship program, where I will spend eight weeks of my summer interning in Seoul, South Korea. I chose to apply to this program because adding it into my academic curriculum would serve as crucial first hand experience to shape what I have learned through the work required for my Global Health Certificate. So far, my course work has been limited to frameworks of how politics and culture can impact the general health of a population. The first hand experience of interning in Seoul would allow me to apply the theories I learned in class into real world practice. South Korea’s health care system, in comparison, the United States’, is much more community focused and not privatized, exposing me to different perspectives on how a health care system should be run. This experience allows me to gain new ideas on health and form comparisons off of. In addition, I believe that there is so much to learn from people who live in a completely different culture than yours. Being able to live and work in a country on the other side of the world is a once in a lifetime experience to learn so much, not only about the other country, but myself as well.
As someone interested in working across many different countries, this experience in Seoul will provide valuable experience in developing soft skills required to work in this context. I hope to learn about the professional standards of communication required to both be respectful and succeed in South Korea. Being able to communicate with colleagues and superiors clearly is one of the most important skills to have in today’s work environment. Furthermore, I would like to develop more of a sense of adaptability; Seoul, for the most part, has a very different work culture than what I am used to in America. This can manifest itself in differing approaches to how work should be done, or how issues should be raised and addressed. Being able to learn more about how Koreans approach issues in a work context could provide me with a new perspective to analyze issues later in my career.
On a personal level, I am excited to challenge myself to learn to be more independent. I am looking forward to balancing many unknown situations with learning to connect with peers in South Korea and learning the intricacies of their culture. I hope to learn more about what brings people together, even if they are from completely different sides of the world. I aim to learn about the daily life of people my age through dialogue and conversations. Although the language barrier may be challenging at times, I believe that with effort and time, deeper levels of understanding can be achieved.