Growing up in South Africa, Anke Kotze was aware of public health crises every day. Droughts and fires, HIV and tuberculosis epidemics, rationed electricity, and a failing healthcare system shaped her worldview. “I realized I was in a position to make change,” reflects Kotze, who came to Cornell to learn how to create more sustainable, equitable health systems with developing countries. She wanted to learn more about disaster management, solutions, and prevention, and was attracted to the flexibility of Cornell’s MPH Program. “You can create your own path here,” she says.

When COVID-19 swept the globe at the start of her second semester at Cornell, Kotze was ready to be part of the solution. She remembers more than one MPH professor telling her class to “never waste a crisis or disaster,” and this stuck with her. She saw the pandemic as an essential moment to sharpen her skills, apply what she learned in the classroom, and learn how things happen “in the real world” with an extremely complex public health problem.

Kotze soon joined the Global COVID-19 Relief Coalition, which is part of a non-profit organization called the Giving Back Fund. She became the global outreach director for the coalition, working with stakeholders around the world. As the lead manager for one project, she helped to ensure that healthcare workers in Zanzibar received four months of personal protective equipment, since the government was not providing any.

“It was extremely challenging,” Kotze recalls. The team members were mostly students without much experience with international logistics, politics, or taxes. “We were figuring it out,” she says, “making cold calls across time zones, asking for money, asking for masks.” Sometimes the challenges seemed insurmountable, but she persisted, applying the problem-solving skills she was already developing through MPH coursework “to so many different areas, even to working through tax exemptions with governments.” With Kotze’s leadership and eight international partners, the project delivered 100,000 masks, protected 310 healthcare workers, and supported 385,000 people in Zanzibar.

In her final semester with the MPH Program this spring, Kotze was part of the Cornell in Washington program, taking courses while interning with the international development organization Health Security Partners, where she developed surveys about vaccine knowledge and willingness for people in Iraq. On top of it all, she worked with the Malaysian government to combat fake news about COVID-19, helped to write a scientific paper about the incidence rate of COVID-19 in Afghanistan, and published an opinion editorial about how COVID-19 is affecting food security in Washington, D.C. For her capstone project, she developed a white paper for the Governmental Accountability Office and the Inspector General, comparing policy gaps from the 2008 financial crisis to the current pandemic to help with better policy preparedness for future disasters.

“It was a lot,” Kotze admits. “But I want to create a sustainable future for public health through international development, and I’m learning so much.” She says the MPH Program helped her gain the confidence to assess systemic gaps, address issues, take action, and develop innovative approaches so she “can actually go change the world.”

Written by Audrey Baker