Andrea Ulrich '12 shares insights from her time as a Rice360 summer intern and Beyond Traditional Borders minor, and how her hands-on experiences in the Rice360 program have shaped her since graduating from Rice.
Could you share your experience as a Rice360 Global Health Technologies student?
I look back fondly at my time with Rice360. At the time, the program was called Beyond Traditional Borders. I distinctly remember attending a talk by a doctor in Haiti, who had volunteered at a medical clinic in Haiti through the non-profit Partners in Health. He spoke of the challenges he faced and the deep need of the patients he cared for. As I left the lecture hall that night, I remember walking away feeling a strong desire to dedicate my life to having that kind of impact.
Rice360 helped expose me to ideas and causes that opened my eyes to the possibilities in the social impact space.
I participated in the internship program in 2009, serving in Ecuador to refine a medical screening kit that my team and I had designed for use by community health working providing care to people in hard-to-reach locations. The kit was equipped with various medical diagnostic devices and designed to fit into a backpack for portability. Our team worked alongside medical brigade teams who were providing care to indigenous communities living in remote, mountainous areas of the Andes. While in these small mountain towns, the medical staff used the supplies from our pack to screen patients for a range of health conditions.
I also completed another Rice360 internship after graduating in 2012, which was based in Lesotho. During this internship, I brought and tested our team's senior design project, BreathAlert, a low-cost device developed to detect when premature babies stop breathing.
How did your experience as a Rice360 student prepare you for your current career?
Rice360 prepared me to work in international development, a field I've been in for 12 years. From 2012 to 2014, I worked in the private sector, and then I returned to global health in 2014. Throughout my job interviews, I frequently referenced the lessons learned and challenges I faced in the Rice360 program, particularly as an intern. It was clear to me that being in the Rice360 program gave me a strong advantage over other job candidates.
One lesson I took away from Rice360 is the importance of the in-country context. For example, Malawi's health system is much more centralized than Nigeria's, where I work now. Nigeria is massive—the most populous African country—and because of that, it utilizes a more federated model. The federated model is the context of care in Nigeria. So, our team adapts our interventions and long-term integration plans to best account for the population's needs.
Rice360 internships also taught me how take a systematic approach to problem-solving by stating your assumptions and committing to an agile design process is critical success factors in this field. Whether an intervention is a device that requires continuous battery operation or a two-year nutrition program grounded in best practices, a systematic problem-solving approaches applies.
What did your career look like immediately after graduating from Rice University?
After graduating from Rice University, I found a job as a management consultant in the pharmaceutical industry, where I began working on a software design for a cloud-based clinical trial data repository. This repository was used by pharmaceutical companies running clinical trials. These companies need to be able to store sensitive patient data demonstrating the effects and impacts of their drugs, as well as to ensure compliance. I needed to protect patient data and comply with various rules and regulations while designing this tool. While developing the software, I remember reflecting on the Rice360 approach to design decisions and the importance of understanding the needs of the people who would use it.
Is there any career advice you would offer to current students or recent graduates who are trying to pursue something similar to what you've done in your career?
I would encourage students to think about the kinds of problems they want to solve. What do they find interesting? Do they love writing and communicating? Do they prefer working solo and conducting research in a lab? Are they drawn to leadership? Rather than being hyper-focused on a specific subject area, which can prematurely close doors, I would encourage students or recent graduates to focus on the functional skills they want to develop. By doing so, a wide variety of unconventional career paths can be open to them.
What current needs and potential opportunities do you see for current students who might be interested in working with NGOs?
For the past six years, I've been the Deputy Director at an NGO based in Washington, D.C., called Development Gateway: An IREX Venture. In my position, I oversee a department of individuals based in over 20 countries. As I support them, I've gained exposure to a wide variety of career paths, and I opportunities for people who can communicate technical subjects effectively. We need individuals who can work well with a team from many different cultures. We need individuals who can hold difficult conversations, whether with a client or with a peer, while being respectful, grounded, and kind.
I would recommend that students looking to work in the non-profit sector to not focus only the "famous" NGOs, but consider smaller, less well-known ones. They can find these opportunities by following individuals they admire on LinkedIn, particularly prolific posters. It's always a good idea to conduct informational interviews to get a sense for an organization's work—and their culture. Readers are welcome to connect with me over LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-ulrich/.
Andrea manages technical projects and ensures that all Development Gateway project teams have the resources and support needed for successful project delivery. She collaborates with the Development Gateway team to identify and improve internal processes and identify new business opportunities for Development Gateway. She also manages the Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI), engaging with up to eight African countries and collaborating with policymakers who work in tobacco control. Andrea has more than eight years of experience in project management, user design, and strategic applications of emerging technology.
Prior to Development Gateway, Andrea worked at the Inter-American Development Bank, where she managed several public health projects and digital health initiatives in Latin America. She also has experience as a Senior Strategy Analyst at Accenture, where she worked on projects relating to data strategy and software development. Andrea holds a degree in Bioengineering with a concentration in Global Health Technologies from Rice University.