A Safe Space To Fail: Mentorship at the Incubator

Global Health Education and Learning Incubator (GHELI) faculty director Sue J. Goldie and former GHELI partners Ankur Pandya and Janice Jhang were featured in a recent news story titled “A ‘Mentoring Tree’ of Health Decision Scientists Continue to Bear Fruit” by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The news story discussed the pivotal role of mentoring in the field of decision science, as well as the importance of mentoring, paying it forward, and balancing priorities. Tips and advice for mentees are also shared, among other points.

Mentorship has always been an integral part of Goldie’s academic career, so perhaps it’s no surprise that mentorship continues to play an important role at the Incubator. At GHELI, we focus on providing opportunities for students and junior faculty to hone their skills and explore different ways of teaching and learning about global health. This includes mentorship provided for our undergraduate interns such as Aimee Ramirez.

Ramirez has previously received help and mentorship setting up a series of student workshops focused on exploring creative mediums, but she has also been working with the Incubator on an individual project to help connect Latin American migrants in the greater Boston area to sexual and reproductive health services. Ramirez recounted how she initially wanted to take on a project addressing maternal mortality in Mississippi, but quickly realized it was too broad for one person and one project. With the help of Goldie, along with Program Manager Ana Cristina Sedas and Associate Director of Educational Initiatives Megan Harding, Ramirez was able to refocus her gaze on a project with a narrower scope. Ramirez says that speaking with Sedas has been especially helpful in providing context and direction, as well as connecting her with people at the Mexican consulate.

“As a student, it’s really easy to have everything conceptual, with the focus being on book learning,” said Ramirez. “But to talk to somebody who’s worked in the field, you realize that the application of programs is very different. So, it’s really useful for me to understand, not only for the development of the project, but also for my personal development and understanding what I want to do post-grad.”

Ramirez says she is very grateful for the mentorship she has received at the Incubator and describes the Incubator as a safe space where she can fail. When she speaks with new freshmen at the college, she finds herself emulating the way her mentors have spoken to her: with dignity and respect, framing her advice in a way that doesn’t feel prescriptive.

The spirit of mentorship carried on by Ramirez ties into our mission at the Incubator: to help promising global health leaders—especially educators—“incubate” their ideas, develop prototypes, and launch into the world. Our multimedia studios and learning-lab atmosphere provide a safe space to experiment and practice with communication and pedagogy. Over the years, many graduate students and junior faculty have worked together with the Incubator to cultivate their skills and create open-source learning materials.

Ankur Pandya, one of Goldie’s mentees featured in the Harvard Chan School article, first came to Harvard as a PhD graduate student in 2007 and returned as an assistant professor in 2014. As a junior faculty member in 2016, Pandya came to the Incubator to build and practice his verbal and visual communication skills, which he still uses in his teaching today. View a snippet of Goldie mentoring Pandya in our Global Learning Studio in the “Peek at Process” video on Vimeo.

Jacob Jameson, a current PhD student and a 2024 Educational Innovation Scholar at CHDS, went through a similar process when he visited the Incubator's pop-up studio last spring. At GHELI, he was able to create storyboards of learning modules and practice teaching and communicating about queuing theory, the mathematical study of waiting lines. Jameson is working with GHELI to develop a learning module on queuing theory and how it could be used to optimize important systems in healthcare.

As a 2023 Educational Innovation Scholar and Master’s student, Janice Jhang worked with the Incubator as part of the Outbreak Science project, a joint initiative with the Center for Health Decision Science and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Working closely with Goldie, Jhang used diagnostic data for SARS-CoV-2 to create case-based exercises, in-class activities, and interactive assignments for high school students. Thanks to the mentorship she received from Goldie and Pandya, Jhang was later accepted into the Harvard PhD program in health policy, a program which she began this Fall 2024.

To learn more about the GHELI studios, our partners and pilots, content prototypes, and more, visit our Studios page.

Read the Harvard Chan School story: A ‘Mentoring Tree’ of Health Decision Scientists Continue to Bear Fruit