Public Health SPOTlight Podcast
Sujani Sivanantharajah, the founder of PHSPOT.org sits down with public health heroes of our time to share career stories, inspiration, and guidance for building public health careers.
The message she hopes to share through these conversations is that building a career is not only about climbing up the ranks, but about crafting a life that you want, around your unique needs, and one that gives importance to your mental health, wellbeing, and building relationships and friendships: you can only do good in the world if you take care of yourself.
Through PH SPOTlight, you will connect with peers you have never met before, and build relationships in a deep and meaningful way.
Public Health SPOTlight Podcast
May 2025 Career Club Update: Events & Opportunities for Public Health Professionals
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We're back with our monthly update on what's happening inside the Public Health Career Club - our membership community designed to support you in building your dream public health career. Whether you're looking for accountability partners, financial guidance, or mentorship opportunities, our May 2025 lineup has something to help you advance your career goals.
- Social Hour on May 6th - connect with peers in public health in a casual setting
- New Co-working sessions on May 7th and 28th using the Pomodoro technique to help you focus on important tasks
- "Doing Good and Doing Well" workshop on May 15th with Dr. Darla Bishop exploring financial strategies for public health professionals
- Office hours with mentors Dr. Marissa Robinson (May 19th) and Megan Haffey (May 27th) for personalized career guidance
- Live Resume Review Clinic on May 21st with Latika, offering real-time feedback on job applications
- Final session of our "Launch Your Idea" workshop series, focusing on post-launch discussion and next steps
Check out phspot.org/club to learn more about our light and premium membership tiers.
Connect with us on LinkedIn or email hello@phspot.org with any questions about joining our community!
Join The Public Health Career Club: A global membership community where public health professionals connect, learn, and support each other in building meaningful and impactful careers.
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Welcome to PH Spotlight, a community for you to build your public health career with. Join us weekly right here and I'll be here too your host, sujani Siva from PH Spot. Hey there, and welcome to the PH Spotlight podcast, a community for you to build your public health career with. Podcast, a community for you to build your public health career with. And this is your host, sujani, and I'm here once again with an update from the Public Health Career Club. This is our membership community, where we support you to build your dream public health career. So last month was the first time I launched kind of this type of episode, and what it is is monthly I come on the podcast and I share with you what's happening inside the career club, and this is a good way for you to kind of see if there's something interesting, useful or just you know an event that you want to be part of inside the Career Club, and it allows you to maybe even reach out to us and ask us a little bit about some of these events and then decide if you wanted to join the membership. For those of you who have never heard about our membership, it is called the Public Health Career Club. We have two membership tiers. One is a light membership and the other one is a premium one, and each of those membership levels kind of give you access to different things. The best place to learn about both of those memberships, as well as kind of everything we do inside our community, is at phspotorg slash club.
Speaker 1:So this episode is your May 2025 update, and I'll just be walking through the various events that we have scheduled for the month of May. So the first one is going to be on May 6th it's on Tuesday and it's in the evening, eastern time, and it's our social hour. This is open to everyone in the community, regardless of which membership tier you're part of, and it's a great way for you to come and meet different people. In public health, our members come. If it's a large group, you get broken out into kind of those breakout rooms and you get to connect with somebody. If it is a smaller group, then typically Janice, our community manager, will keep everybody in the larger room and you'll get to meet everyone and kind of just chat about whatever's on your mind. It's really there's no agenda. It's your time and it's a space that we've created to just be social with your peers.
Speaker 1:The second one that we are hosting like second event is May 7th, also open to everyone, and it's actually the first time we are doing this and they are co-working sessions. So what we've heard is that you kind of need some time and space to work on things, whether it's your resume, whether there is a manuscript you're writing or just some piece of work, and things can get in the way. You know, life can get in the way and you don't have that kind of accountability. So the co-working session is there to help you focus on a task that you would like to get completed for that month or that week. And so on May 7th we'll be doing the first kind of like check-in and co-working session and what we're going to be doing is trying out the Pomodoro technique, where you have what. How we've kind of split up that hour is with a five minute check-in, so we're just gonna see how everyone's doing. What are you going to be working on? Then we're going to have a 25 minute work period and then another five minute break and then another 25 minute work period. So essentially, you're going to have two 25 minute work period with some accountability partners. So if you do need to kind of kind of have, have people around you while you're working. So essentially everyone's doing their work and you're just all on mute. It's kind of having um like a study group, essentially, but virtual. So that's happening on May 7th.
Speaker 1:The uh third thing that's happening is a um. It a part of our money series. So one time when I was hosting a mentor hour, there was a lot of discussion around salaries and just wealth creation for public health professionals, knowing that the profession or the, the work that we're in, doesn't typically always have a high salary attached to it. There are roles in perhaps for-profit organizations and um. I personally am aware of individuals who have taken on those roles or are doing really well or enjoying it that do pay really well, but majority of the traditional public health roles don't pay so well. So there was a discussion about okay, how can we as public health professionals get creative and perhaps create wealth for ourselves in other ways?
Speaker 1:So, just kind of thinking about that topic, we thought we'd launch a series of different talks to help educate public health professionals, especially our community, around just financials. So this first talk is titled Doing Good and Doing Well Financial Strategy for Public Health Leaders and it will be hosted by Dr Darla Bishop, and she's a founder of Financis LLC, a financial education and consulting company based in Michigan. She's also the author of how to Afford Everything and she's an international speaker, health policy expert system strategist, and so she has been on our podcast. So you can definitely look her up on our podcast to see if it's somebody you'd love to learn from. And what we are going to be talking about here is, just, given everything that's happening around us, how can we, as public health leaders, build financial security without walking away from the mission that called us to?
Speaker 1:This work right is designed for early to mid-career professionals in the US and Canada and it's a workshop style session and what Darla is going to be doing is helping you identify your current financial position, then explore ethical income diversification options like consulting and content creation, and then help you build long-term financial strategies for flexibility and resilience. So you know whether you've lost your job, you're looking for new opportunities or just simply ready to regain control of your financial future. This session is there to help you with just the different tools that are available while you stay rooted in your public health value. So that is happening on May 15th, again Eastern Time in the evening, and this talk or workshop is open to our premium members. The next session is our office hour so we host or we have available office hours with our mentors.
Speaker 1:We have a handful of mentors that hold office hours, so essentially you just drop in, talk to them about the problem of the week and they kind of help you navigate things. On May 19th we have a mentor hour with Dr Marissa Robinson and she is a mentor, longtime mentor, and she can help you out with anything from navigating your career, your education path, or just kind of talk about next steps in your career. She has a great background and she's a strategic leader, visionary, within the field of infectious diseases. She's focused her work on HIV, aids just a whole ton of experience and she also has a DRPH and MPH and so if there are questions around any of those kind of education paths, marissa is a great person to talk to about and she just comes with a lot of energy, which I personally love. And again, our mentor office hours are open to our premium members.
Speaker 1:And then on May 21st, another one of our mentors, latika, will be running our live resume review clinic. So what we do on May during those clinics is Latika essentially chooses two resumes of individuals who are applying to a certain job at the moment and she will walk through and help you understand where you may need to make edits. So the individual who has submitted their resume gets that one-on-one feedback while the rest of the community members get to watch and learn from, while the rest of the community members get to watch and learn from what she's coaching essentially on this individual's application. And so this session is on May 21st and it's called the Live Resume Review Clinic and this is a session that is open to everyone, regardless of the membership level. We have another office hour on May 27th and that's with Megan Heafy. You can talk to Megan about job application support, especially in academia as well as industry and private sector. So Megan has worked in both. She also has a DRPH and an MPH, so you can talk to her about those or, um, just uh, if you need some help to figure out your career path, megan can help you with that. Um. So megan again is a long-time mentor, uh, one who's uh well sought after by our members and very passionate and just loves mentoring and helping people out. So that's May 27th, again open to premium members, and then May 28th we have another co-working session. So these will be held bi-weekly, and so if you need some accountability again and just time to work on something, come to these co-working sessions, because it's a good way to get work done, whether it's your resume, your cover letter or maybe something that you're working on.
Speaker 1:And we, last month we hosted or I hosted a workshop. It was a four part series called Launch your Idea and it was an interactive four part workshop series and it was meant to provide people with clarity, structure, actionable steps to help them move from idea to execution. And we finished three of those sessions. So part one, part two and part three and part four is set to take place in May. Although our events calendar has it down for a specific date, it's going to happen at some point in May because the part four session is meant to be a post-launch discussion and office hour. So, essentially, the people that came to this workshop have committed to launching an idea and we worked through that idea over the past month and a half and at this session they should have launched this idea of theirs and we're going to be talking about it. So the date will be adjusted based on our past participants of this workshop to ensure that they've all launched so we can have a fruitful conversation about how launch went and what are some of their next steps.
Speaker 1:And so it's a office hour style session. Again, it's a workshop, an office hour available to premium club members, and if you do end up signing up for the premium membership um and you want to come to the part four session, you can, because we've uploaded all of the um, other kind of workshop material into our courses page and so you can go through, watch all of them, work through those ideas and those steps and then join us for part four or maybe just come to part four if you've already launched an idea and we can chat about next steps there. So that is what May is looking like. So, to summarize, we have our May social hour, then we have our co-working session May 7th. We have our May social hour, then we have our co-working session May 7th and then we have our finance kind of chat, so doing good and doing well financial strategy for public health leaders. Then we have our mentor office hour with Marissa and then we have the resume clinic with Latika. We have another office hour with Megan and then another co-working session. So that takes us to the end of May, in addition to part four of your Launch, your Idea workshop, and we're going to be talking about how launch went and just have a post-launch discussion. So that is May Lots of things happening and if you are interested, curious, please check out phspotorg slash club and everything should be there.
Speaker 1:If you have additional questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Linkedin is probably the best place to reach out to me, or you can send us an email at hello, at phspotorg or even on this podcast. I think there's a way to text us, so use any of those methods, ask us some questions and I really hope to see you inside the public health career club at one of these events. So, as always, thank you so much for listening in, for tuning into this episode especially, and keep taking inspired action towards your public health dreams and I'll see you soon.