Global health mentorship today: Jay Graham

Jay Graham is an associate professor in residence, environmental health sciences, and program director, Master of Public Health Program, University of California, Berkeley.

My undergraduate degree is in biology from the University of Arkansas. After I graduated, I worked for an environmental consulting firm that sent me to South America. I was working on oil and gas projects and wasn’t finding it completely fulfilling and someone told me about environmental health, so I ended up going back to school for a master of public health at UT Houston Health Science Center, which had a satellite campus in El Paso, Texas, (where I could continue to use my language skills). I ended up working on the U.S./Mexico border for five years, which I loved, but decided to get a PhD because, whenever I’d try for certain grant applications, I had to partner with someone who had a PhD. After that, I became an environmental health advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Three years later, George Washington University (GWU) started a new global environmental health MPH program and I applied to direct that, just to see if, maybe, that was a possibility…I ended up at GWU for five years.

Some of my mentorships have lasted a long time—I still talk with my first MPH student from nearly fifteen years ago. Others I only hear from when they need a letter of recommendation. When I mentor someone, I always think, I could one day be working for them, so I try to create a level of respect. There are people who were not good mentors to me and I know I then avoided future opportunities to collaborate with them.

I’ve had some awesome mentors. Dr. Joao Ferreira-Pinto, a behavioral health scientist, had me reading books like “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” He helped me think empathetically about other populations and focus on what I wanted with my life. We stay in contact sporadically. When I got to Berkeley five years ago, we started a group called The Surf Club—just a random name. We were a bunch of junior faculty who’d meet and just talk, maybe problem solve, and sometimes invite speakers to come talk to us. Who do we want to come tell us about how they built their research team? Or how they manage grants? It was very organic, just junior faculty deciding their own path.

Mentorship is about a network. You’re not going to get everything you need from one mentor, so you need to devise a group of people that you’re pulling from. Sometimes friends and family can fill mentoring roles, if they help you think more broadly about a problem.

Culture and context affect mentoring, so you need awareness. You come into situations and think, Oh, we’re all on equal footing. But maybe you come from a high-income country, they’re from a low- or middle-income country, and they feel the pay gap is unfair—which it is. Navigating those issues and being honest is important. It’s also important to understand and work through the local context. This can be difficult. For example, in Ecuador there remains systemic racism that many people do not recognize. I’ve really grappled with this, trying to figure out how to address this with a few of my colleagues in a way that is respectful.

One of my mentors is a female scientist who’s been in academia for 40 years. One mentee, a Global Health Equity Scholar here in Ecuador, is a medical doctor who’s now gotten her PhD in microbiology. I’ve learned from both. When I mentor female doctoral students, I worry there are things I may not be catching. I might say to a male student at the end of the day, Let’s go have a beer. I’m not sure female students would feel as comfortable having a beer with me. I ask my mentees whether I treat male and female mentees differently and the feedback I get is positive… but I’m not sure about it because there are power differentials. I’m planning to send out a survey and have them respond anonymously and hopefully honestly. You need to know your own weaknesses—what you’re not catching. What could I do to improve my mentoring? What would you have liked more of? Less of? I may not be as aware as I think I am.