Julia Lanham Helps Students Navigate Job Search at ‘Defining Moment’.

‘A Quintessential Moment in Public Health’
Julia Lanham, director of advising, relationship management, and career equity, helps students navigate the job search process at a defining moment in their career.
Landing the first job after graduate school is always a significant accomplishment, but for recent and soon-to-be graduates of the School of Public Health, it is “a defining moment in their career,” says Julia Lanham.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created scores of opportunities for graduates to transfer valuable skills from the classroom to the real world during a global crisis that has called for bold ideas and innovative public health solutions.
As the director of certificate advising, relationship management, and career equity in the Career & Practicum Office (CPO), Lanham guides students through all aspects of the job search process, from resume review and networking tips to interview preparation and salary negotiation. She has advised students since joining SPH in 2014, and this year, she says many students are exploring—and securing—COVID-19-related roles outside of their original areas of interest.
“This is such a quintessential moment in public health,” says Lanham. “Students originally may not have been interested in working in infectious diseases, but they really want to be part of the solution to the pandemic.” She says SPH students are entering the frontlines as contract tracers and care coordinators, as well as in behind-the-scenes roles to manage these new teams and oversee the vast COVID-19 data collection efforts.
“I tell students, ‘20 years from now, you’re going to look back and talk to your younger colleagues about what it was like to be on the ground during this pandemic,’” says Lanham. “They are really stepping up and it’s such an exciting thing to see.”
Prior to SPH, Lanham worked on the ground herself for 15 years in community health, managing HIV prevention studies at The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health, and serving as the assistant director of family planning and the director of the Office of Adolescent Health and Youth Development at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. In each of her roles, she has been resolute in advancing racial and gender equity, and has spearheaded initiatives at SPH and within the community to foster changes that create inclusive and equitable spaces for marginalized groups.
In 2019, Lanham helped begin a multi-phase racial equity audit to assess the work of the CPO and determine whether the office has conducted its practices through an equitable lens, in the areas of recruitment and hiring, staff promotions, student advising, graduate employment data collection, and work with employers.
As part of the audit, and in direct response to student interest, the office interviewed many employers to gain insight into organizations’ knowledge and practice of racial equity, and to what extent these employers implement equitable processes into their hiring and business practices. The CPO also gained a clearer understanding of organizations’ expectations of candidates and how the office can best prepare students to articulate equity principles in job interviews.
Some organizations recognize that they need to do more to promote equity in all of their practices, while others explicitly incorporate in their work, and even into their interviews with candidates, Lanham says.
Candidates must be able to express their own racial identity development and understanding that racism is a structural problem versus an interpersonal one.”
For example, she says, the Boston Public Health Commission will say to a candidate, ‘as a white woman, why are you applying for a job working in and with communities of color?’ And if the candidate can’t articulate an answer that shows they understand how their identity fits into structural racism, it won’t fly,” says Lanham, who helps students and graduates prepare responses to these questions. “It’s not that these organizations don’t want to hire white women, but the candidate must have an understanding of oppressive systems, and be able to express their own racial identity development and understanding that racism is a structural problem versus an interpersonal one.”
For the second phase of the audit this spring, Lanham and the CPO staff will analyze data from recent graduates on their perceptions of how equitable the office’s services are to identify areas for improvement, the first time those data have been collected. And they will look at employment data from SPH graduates by race and gender to examine how our graduates with marginalized identities are doing in the workforce upon graduation.
At SPH, Lanham also serves as co-chair with Mahogany Price of a new sub-committee on the Education Team that supports the school’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice agenda. She is also the advisor for the Queer Alliance student organization, providing support to the group as members advocate for school-wide policy changes and action to foster more inclusive environments in the classroom and throughout campus.
“While progress has been made, there are still structural issues on campus that need attention,” says Lanham, citing the need for gender-neutral bathrooms that are easy for SPH students to find and access in buildings other than Talbot, as well as an increased understanding and respect for people’s pronouns. “We’ve heard from several students that they are being misgendered when they get a COVID test, and it is a very stressful event for them every week.”
Outside of SPH, Lanham is just as committed to promoting racial equity and social justice in her community. She serves as the vice-chair of the Board of Directors for YW Boston and is very active in a faith-based organization, Hope Central Church in Jamaica Plain, a place where “equity is our north star” where she belongs to a white affinity group that seeks to notice and un-do white supremacy culture within themselves. She also serves on Brookline for Racial Justice in Equity, a group that advocates for anti-racist policies and practices within Brookline’s public school system, where her two teenage daughters attend school.
A growth mindset and an embrace of anti-oppression work are two things that Lanham says she appreciates most about the SPH community.
“Faculty, staff, and students are open to learning and doing new things, and our concept of equity and anti-racist work has really grown over the last few years,” she says. “It makes me feel hopeful.”
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