• Home
• About Us
• What We Do
• Get Involved
• News & Events
• Blog

GlobeMed Senior Speeches (1 of 3) - Caleb Reinhold

by Ashley Hagaman on March 11, 2010

And honestly, that's about all I thought it would be.

I couldn't have been more wrong. After attending a few meetings, I began to notice a silent and growing energy in the group that would show itself every so often in the form of a member shuffling their schedule around to be at a fundraiser or when one of the members going to Rwanda that summer would mention the plans for their trip with the enthusiasm of a five year old on a shopping spree at Toys R' Us. E-Board applications came up and I decided to go for broke and apply to be president of this "GlobeMed GWU" group, even if I wasn't sure exactly what it was we were doing.

Amazingly enough, I somehow managed to be selected to be the next president of GlobeMed at GWU and the stage was set for what has become one of the most formative experiences of my life. Arriving back on campus for my junior year, I held a vague idea of what a GlobeMed chapter did and how we could continue that but had very little idea about why that mattered or what we had the power to do.  Today I act as co-president of GlobeMed GWU for a chapter whose membership is deeply versed in the issues surrounding global health inequities, confident that the challenges these issues present can be overcome, and proud to be part of the fight for global health equity. I myself started my time in GlobeMed as a know-it-all premed student not even remotely close to being capable of leading the talented group of people I now do and have grown to become a confident and enthusiastic leader of a chapter with a vision I truly believe in and values I strive to embody.

GlobeMed GW lured me in when I thought the only way to "help" people, in a health sense, was to be a doctor. It will soon turn me out as the holder of a biology degree who has no plans to attend medical school but does have plans, big plans, to help a lot of people lead healthier lives. As a direct result of my time in GlobeMed, I've decided to pursue admission to an MBA program with a concentration in health care management in the hopes of effectively mobilizing and strengthening healthcare delivery organizations as a career. I no longer have any interest in becoming a physician. I plan to work to empower physicians and other healthcare workers to do their jobs to the best of their ability. This may seem strange to some of you, but I don't want to be the next Paul Farmer. I want to help the next Paul Farmer get the resources and support he or she needs to do the incredible and profoundly necessary work he or she is capable of doing.

Knowing that everyone in our network cares about improving global health equity so deeply inspires me to do everything I can to empower GlobeMed GWU's Staff to make their impact. Finally, I can understand what a coach can offer a team of professional athletes. Phil Jackson can't always hit a game winning shot like Kobe Bryant but he can help him set up a play to get open and take that shot. I can't come up with the kind of events that GlobeMed GWU's campaign coordinators do, but I can help them to have all the resources and support they need to carry them out. I can't ever possibly plan a trip to Rwanda for four other people that will implement a maternal health education program by myself, but I can guide a group in that pursuit and offer them my experience as well as give them the tools they need along the way.

Clearly, somewhere along the way, in some dramatic fashion, something must have changed right? Some light bulb must have turned on, some drastic realization must have rattled me to my core. Some epic experience must have occurred for me to abandon the idea of going to medical school, all of the sudden grasp what GlobeMed GWU really was, what it was doing, what it could do, and what all of that meant to me.

I can't pick out that single moment when a bolt of lightning struck and electrified my passion for GlobeMed and its work.  It's impossible to place this catalyst in any one experience, exchange, or effort that changed everything for me. What I can do though is describe to you the moments when I feel that strangely exciting "GlobeMed high" that affirms to me, and I'm sure all of you as well, that we made a HUGELY positive life decision to seize the opportunity to be a part of an organization and a movement based on the right values, the right vision, the right model and most importantly, the right people.

In September of 2008, I was at the first Leadership Institute that GlobeMed, the student-run nonprofit that back then had existed in its current state for just over two years, had invited chapter leaders from all over the network to attend.  Sitting across from a self described "tiny Asian girl" named Bianca during a workshop, I listened to her express to us all how sincerely excited and equally empowered she had felt upon receiving a grant from GlobeMed to travel to Uganda and while there, began GlobeMed UNC's partnership with Health Alert Uganda. I knew listening to Bianca then and I know now, the ideas and strategies being discussed at that leadership institute were going to lay the groundwork for a community of students who would be empowered to create positive and tangible impacts in underserved communities around the world through the values, vision and model of the GlobeMed network.

When I sign into a webinar in the middle of August with forty college students from chapters all over the country to discuss new management and operating strategies designed for their chapters for the upcoming school year, I KNOW that those students are going to play very large roles in the public and global health fields in the future.

When I watch one Staff member explain their unique opinion on health as a human right during a ghU discussion and I see five eager hands go up immediately just dying to respond, I know something pivotal is happening in the minds of those Staff members.

When I meet someone who has heard of GlobeMed and knows what our chapter and even our national organization does as well as any of our Staff members, it screams to me that we're doing something that people want to support. 

When I see that our network has recruited over two thousand people to our cause and raised $35,000 in a competition among charities around the world, I KNOW that we're different than other student organizations.

When I watch a collection of videos about what kind of world GlobeMed Staff members from all over our network want to live in by 2030, I have to be honest with you here, I get emotional, because I know I'm part of an organization that has the right values, the right vision, and the right people to change the playing field of global health. 

I could easily have seen these things two years ago and not even have KNOWN WHAT WAS HAPPENING. It's not the single moments when I realize we're doing something special that have changed my mind about the impact that you and I can make, it's knowing that another student who has work and classes and other responsibilities in addition to GlobeMed sees them too and that they have the same powerful effect on her. The effect of those little moments of shared realization puts our organization on a different level than its peers. The mutual understanding that everyone in this room is part of something unique and capable of creating real, positive, and sustainable progress for both our partners and our network is what's changed my mind about the impact that we can make.  We're all on the same page already, and for the rest of this weekend, we'll be writing, word by word, as a network, the story of what GlobeMed is today and where it's headed tomorrow.

Being a part of GlobeMed's student movement made me believe again that I can have an impact. Being a part of GlobeMed taught me that by giving the right people the right tools, I can help them make their impact stronger than they could on their own. My experience in GlobeMed has changed my career plans in a direction I never imagined it would. It's shown that the best way for me to create the kind of change I want to see in the world is to partner with others who want that same change, and do my best to empower them to create that change.

That's the role that GlobeMed has played in my life; it's shown me what I want to do professionally and given me a set of values to guide me on that pursuit.  My question for you tonight is: What role will GlobeMed play in your own lives? Will it push you to explore a new vocation or career? Will it provide you a moral framework for your personal life? Will it develop you into a stronger and more capable leader or mold you into a lifelong advocate of social justice? Will it provide you with an opportunity to be part of a community that you will always be a part of and do your best to give back to as you grow into adulthood?

Undoubtedly, your GlobeMed experience will affect you.  I challenge all of you here tonight to ask yourself what you want that effect to be and to reevaluate the role that GlobeMed's vision and values will play in the rest of your involvement with it. Ask yourself why you're here and not at another conference sponsored by another non-profit. When you find your answer, redefine your involvement in GlobeMed to fit that answer and I swear to you, you'll find that you're not just part of a student organization or a movement, you're part of a innovative and groundbreaking way of facing the challenges in today's world, and you'll know what role you're going to play in tackling them.

GlobeMed, P.O. Box 292, Evanston, IL 60204-0292
Created by Synergema