ELISABETH SNELL

Someone once described me as a "public health cruise ship director," and for better or worse, it stuck! Generally I help people identify big questions, how they're going to answer those questions, what activities they'll need to complete, and when they'll need to get the job done. It's a lot of program management, budget balancing, spotting potential delays, dreaming up creative solutions, and all around cheerleading! Currently, we just wrapped up a mammoth population health surveillance study, which is a fancy way of saying that we're assessing the health of New Yorkers to see whether the city's health has changed over the past decade, and how we compare to the rest of the country. These study findings will be really useful -- and not just for NYC! If our findings show that municipal laws like the trans-fat ban have actually impacted health, then other communities may consider implementing similar health policies.  

 

After college, I started working in domestic violence and sexual assault prevention. At some point, I realized that hotline work and safe houses were important resources for survivors, but much broader interventions were necessary for major social change, which led to big picture thinking about how a society can best protect and improve people's lives. There are a million ways to work in public health -- from helping to make fresh vegetables more accessible in food deserts to expanding affordable primary care services to cleaning up water systems to helping towns launch and run robust senior centers.

 

The first time I brought my partner to Family Camp, I gave her one of those epic walking tours where you carefully explain why each rock and wooded path has meaning ("this is where Abbie and I sat on a rock during Guide Privileges and fretted about high school, this is where Eleanor and I watched the sunset when we weren't on duty for evening activity"). While we walked down the Hut Hill ("this is where I made a fire with two matches and boiled water in under ten minutes") she commented that she'd never before seen a place "so devoted to the pursuit of joy." All the large and small challenges at ALC -- practicing hard to nab a lead in the Full Session musical, passing swim level tests, pursuing my Junior Maine Woodsmen, making my bed the ALC way, endless SWATHOTS during JR. CT summer, even walking up that hill umpteen times a day -- all boiled down to the realization that pushing myself to accomplish goals brought great personal satisfaction, growth and joy. (Of course, then I had to marry her.)

 

I gained so many things from my ALC experience that I could fill up a decades-worth of Log Books. (And this is why I give to the Scholarship Fund every year without fail.) But two ALC tenets are key for me. First, I remember Jean McMullan telling me to "always remember who you are, and what you represent." This rings in my ears when I'm about to talk with funders, ask a community board for support, convince another department to pitch in to our project, or even just lead a difficult meeting. I think about why I believe in my work, and why it matters, and how I'm going to make that come through my words. The second is what Jean, Sue and Betsy remind counselors during pre-camp: everyone deserves a second chance. That is, if you learn that you're about to inherit a returning camper who was particularly...feisty...last summer, hold off your judgement before you start to panic that she's going to ruin your tent dynamics. A lot can happen over a winter, and she deserves a fresh start instead of you assigning her a summer identity. Unsurprisingly, this goes for just about everyone under the sun.  

 

To the counselors looking ahead to college graduation and starting to wonder how you'll ever find a job, I will leave you with this: It's a short line between packing out a trip (or keeping 30 Rangers afloat in canoes or efficiently cooking hundreds of hot dogs for beach day -- to name a few) and managing a six million dollar project! If you can "flex" and figure out what to do with a row of soggy campers staring back at you in the Camp House while it pours outside, one day you'll be managing a hotline, balancing a budget, leading a rally, or launching a business.