What If We Tried It This Way? A Summer Reflection from an MPH Intern

By: Hemon Mekonnen

I came into this practicum as an incoming second-year MPH student in Health Policy and Management, curious about what it looks like when public health meets the justice system. Walking into A Curiae, I was honest with myself: I had never worked with a justice-involved population, and I didn't fully know what to expect. During my interview, Wyatt's passion for the Professional Mentorship Initiative (PMI) was immediate and infectious, the kind of conviction that makes you lean forward in your seat. By the time we were done talking, I wasn't nervous anymore. I was curious. And curiosity felt like the right place to start a ten-week journey.

My first weeks at A Curiae were spent absorbing everything I could. I came in with questions about the organization, about the population, about terminology that was entirely new to me, and a genuine desire to be a sponge. I wanted to understand not just what A Curiae did but also what public health had to do with any of it. Spoiler: it had everything to do with it. 

PMI was an established program already doing meaningful work. My job was to sharpen the words PMI used to introduce itself, build the materials that would bring the right people in, and tell the story that would help everyone who encountered it understand why it mattered. And at the center of all of it was the anchor that PMI wasn't just about helping clients navigate the next chapter of their careers. It was about building their confidence and giving them real agency over their own professional goals. That distinction mattered as it shaped everything I outputted.

I built a print-ready client journey map so that someone stepping into PMI for the first time could see the road ahead of them. I designed recruitment flyers to bring mentors and clients into the program. I put together shot-by-shot PMI pitch videos, learning a Canva-to-CapCut workflow from scratch, figuring out how to record myself, align my voice to animations, and edit it all into something polished and intentional. I had never made anything like it before, and I won't pretend it was easy. There were long days, a lot of tutorial videos, and more than a few learning curves. But it was one of the most fun challenges of the summer, the kind of project where the vision in my head and the final product started to align, and that feeling was worth every frustrated re-record. 

The deliverables were only part of it. Running alongside all of it were conversations that pushed my thinking in directions I hadn't anticipated. Wyatt connected me with people who were pivotal to understanding PMI from every angle. Emebet gave me deep insights on how to approach my work through a public health lens. Sachin, Alec, and Anjuli offered a mentor's perspective that changed how I thought about recruitment and what mentors need to feel supported. Gavin Corn and Gavin O'Neil deepened my understanding of the justice system in ways that no reading assignment ever could. And then there was Farrah, who generously walked me through what it takes to scale a volunteer program, lessons I carried straight back into how I thought about PMI's growth. But perhaps the most memorable moment of the entire practicum was attending reentry court at the Oakland Courthouse. Sitting in that room, watching Judge Tigar work, was something I didn't expect to move me the way it did. His passion and genuine care for every single client in front of him reminded me why this work matters and who it is ultimately for.

That room crystallized something I had been feeling all summer but hadn't yet found the words for. What ten weeks with this organization taught me is that health equity is relational. It is built in the trust someone extends when they decide to show up to a mentorship session for the first time, not knowing what to expect but choosing to try anyway. It is present the moment a client realizes that someone in their corner is not evaluating them, but invested in where they are headed. I watched that shift happen in real time through the work we were doing, and it stayed with me. Working at A Curiae also dismantled something I had been carrying without realizing : the assumption that public health and the justice system are separate worlds that only occasionally intersect. They are not. They are entangled, and the people navigating both simultaneously are carrying a weight that most systems are not designed to acknowledge, let alone address. A Curiae is trying to address it. Being part of that effort, even for ten weeks, gave me a level of clarity about why this work matters that I could not have gotten anywhere else.

Wyatt, thank you for trusting me with a program that mattered this much, and for every conversation where you let me think out loud until the idea got better. Jenee, and Sachin, thank you for being sounding boards, for ideas that weren't fully formed yet, and for making the space to ask "but what if we tried it this way instead." And to everyone who took the time to connect with me to talk honestly about the justice world and what PMI needed to serve it well, thank you. Your insight is integrated into every deliverable I built these past 10 weeks. I'm leaving this practicum with more questions than I started with, in the best way. And I look forward to witnessing the growth of PMI.