Austin College Posey Leadership Award recipient Barbara Pierce Bush recalled the day when she was only 21 years old, standing in a Ugandan health clinic alongside her mother First Lady Laura Bush and realizing there was more to her path than an architecture degree from Yale.
Not too long after that defining moment, she co-founded Global Health Corps, a nonprofit organization that sends young activists on one-year, paid fellowships to deliver equitable health care. Serving several years as the organization’s CEO, today Bush is board chair for the group that has sent 1,000 fellows to more than 40 communities in Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia, and underserved areas in the northeast United States.
On that day in Uganda, the Bushes met a Ugandan mother who had brought her own daughter to the clinic. The girl was small, and Barbara guessed she might be three. No, she was seven. She was small not because she was young, but because she was ill. At that time, AIDS treatment in Africa was still nearly impossible to get while in America, the disease was well-managed through easily accessible drugs.
“I realized that the girl was just born at the wrong place at the wrong time by no fault of her own, and I saw my own privilege of being born in the right place and the right time. And, it made me angry,” Bush said. “Suddenly architecture was no longer interesting to me.”
That was in 2003, when Barbara began to nurture and grow the belief that health is a human right. “Now, in 2018, not only do we at Global Health Corps save lives but we ensure that they thrive,” she said. “It’s an incredible time to work in global health. We have the medicine and the technology—the tools—to address the need. Life is better now than ever before, but people still die from preventable diseases every day around the world. The need for more work remains.”
Global Health Corps is modeled after the Teach For America program and sends out fellows to address healthcare needs worldwide. The cross-cultural teams—one international fellow and one from the destination country—work with existing nonprofit organizations and government agencies to provide health services. (Teach For America’s founder, Wendy Kopp, was the 2006 Austin College Posey Leadership Award recipient. GHC’s first partner organization was Partners in Health, founded by 2007 award recipient Paul Farmer.) Bush mentioned she was humbled to see the list of prior award recipients and has worked with several of them in her work with GHC, also including Zainab Salbi (2011) and Nicholas Kristof (2016).
Bush said when she mentions the field of global health she knows people imagine doctors and nurses at work. GHC is showing young people how they fit into the global health issue if they are not doctors and nurses. “We are seeding a field desperate for talent,” she said, “moving the right talent into the right positions, harnessing the passions of these fellows and using their skill sets to confront the needs for health equity.”
Fellows are chosen from varied fields such as supply chain management, architecture, engineering, and others, along with expected medical fields of study. Bush told several stories of individuals in the field who brought skills from unlikely places to make significant, positive change in the health of thousands of people.
“This year we had 10,000 applicants for 140 positions,” Bush said. “I wake up every day excited knowing there are that many young people who are concerned about global health. Knowing I am standing in front of an equally engaged community here at Austin College today also excites me.”
“I see that we have a shared vision with Austin College, it’s one of resilience and servant leadership,” Bush said. “We look for skills that are, for some reason, called soft skills, but are actually the skills of strength such as compassion, vulnerability, resiliency, and a commitment to social justice. These are all linked to leadership.”
“Our fellows are people who intentionally face systems that are a failure and are broken, and seek to fix them,” she continued. “The fellows are people like you who are here today. They have provided the right amount of anger and hopefulness to make a change.”
Bush closed with a line from a poem by Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day,” quoting, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
“Re-imagine your life and step out in leadership,” Bush encouraged students in the audience. “It’s quite daunting—but I know you are up for the challenge.”
Bush spoke at the Posey Leadership Convocation on campus Tuesday, April 3, to Austin College faculty, staff, and community members. She later visited with students in a question-and-answer session, and signed copies of her book Sisters First, co-authored with her twin Jenna Bush Hager.
Bush will receive the Posey Leadership Award on April 4, 2018, at the Perot Museum in Dallas following a day of activity in Dallas. The award honors an outstanding individual who demonstrates the principles of servant leadership in The Posey Leadership Award honors an outstanding individual who has demonstrated the principles of servant leadership by taking a courageous stand on a public policy issue that advances a humanitarian or educational purpose; improving the quality of health, educational, or community services; creating opportunities for young people that help them enhance their educational experience and move to a new level of service to society.
The Austin College Leadership Award was created in March 2008 through the generosity of Sally and Lee Posey, founder of Palm Harbor Homes; the Posey name was added to the award upon Lee Posey’s death in 2008. Past recipients include Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America; Paul Farmer, noted Harvard physician and humanitarian; Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone; Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of Grameen Bank; Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund; Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy; Nathan Wolfe, epidemiologist and author of The Viral Storm; Shigeru Ban, humanitarian architect and founder of the Voluntary Architects’ Network; co-recipients Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, founders of Half the Sky Movement and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists; and Vikram Patel, psychiatrist and director of international mental health programs.
Austin College, a private national liberal arts college located north of Dallas in Sherman, Texas, has earned a reputation for excellence in academic preparation, international study, pre-professional foundations, leadership development, committed faculty, and hands-on, adventurous learning opportunities. One of 40 schools profiled in Loren Pope’s influential book Colleges That Change Lives, Austin College boasts a welcoming community that embraces diversity and individuality, with more than 40 percent of students representing ethnic minorities. A residential student body of approximately 1,275 students and a faculty of more than 100 allow a 13:1 student-faculty ratio and personalized attention. The College is related by covenant to the Presbyterian Church (USA) and cultivates an inclusive atmosphere that supports students’ faith journeys regardless of religious tradition. Founded in 1849, the College is the oldest institution of higher education in Texas operating under original name and charter.