Update on life and intro to kidney disease series of posts - 31 October, 2016, Chicago, IL, USA

As some of you know, I am an environmental engineer and had been working in Chicago at a local non-profit since early 2013.  Recently, all that has changed.  I decided to go back to school, however, not for engineering.  Given my experience with Engineers Without Borders (I have another EWB trip to add to this and a trip to Ecuador to add as well...all coming, I promise), I have decided to go to school for public health, with a concentration in global health.  I think that this will supplement my engineering degree very well. I have always been passionate about travel and working on environmental and social justice issues, while also looking at the overall health and well-being of the community (wells that are well constructed take all of this into consideration).  I think that many engineers are mean well in several situations, but often don't know all of the health ramifications of certain actions, and I believe that pursuing this degree will help to "round out" my knowledge, thus making my designs and projects much more sustainable and overall, better, for the communities that I work in - whether that is domestic or abroad.

In pursuing this degree, I have had to leave my old job and have decided to focus on school full-time.  So far, this is not a decision that I regret, and I am thinking of adding an MBA to my studies as well, as I think that this will make me an even more robust engineer.

I am writing all of this for two reasons: 1) as a general update, as I know there are a few people who read this as a way to keep up with the work I am doing, and 2) because my next series of posts will be part of a project for one of my classes.  The project is to create a blog post on a work-related current issue.  My group has been assigned the issue of kidney disease in Mesoamerican workers, as this has become an epidemic in recent years. I volunteered to use my blog as a platform for these posts as most of the work that I have been doing has been in central and south america, largely with those of a lower socioeconomic status - so in short, I have been working with the demographics who could potentially be affected by this.  I say "could" because I don't know of anyone personally who does has chronic kidney disease, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone I do know from my work down there were to develop it or already has it.

I hope you enjoy the next series, as it is the direction my life's work seems to be going at the moment...