#PolicyProfile: Siatta Gray, MPP ’26

#PolicyProfile: “My passion for service is rooted in the belief that geography should never determine destiny — who lives, who thrives, or who gets to dream. Everyone deserves equal access to opportunity, health, and the freedom to become who they want to be. Coming from Liberia, I’ve witnessed firsthand the human cost of policy failures — from 14 years of civil war that shattered every fulcrum of society to the Ebola outbreak that exposed deep systemic inequities. I saw mothers bury children because facilities lack oxygen and families face an impossible trade-off between food or medicine. Those moments taught me that policy is not abstract — it is the difference between hope and despair. At the National Public Health Institute of Liberia, the country’s equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I began as a health policy and planning specialist, where I helped design strategies to safeguard public health. I later rose to director of human resources, spearheading initiatives to build a resilient, fit-for-purpose public health workforce. One of the most defining moments of my career was leading Liberia’s One Health Workforce Needs Assessment. My team assessed more than 11,000 professionals nationwide across human, animal, and environmental health sectors. When roads became impassable, we slept under open skies. Stranded without food or water in that rainforest, I reminded my team that people beyond the forest needed to be heard, and our hardship mirrored their daily reality. This experience reaffirmed a critical lesson: evidence alone does not save lives. Power, governance, and donor priorities decide whether policies translate into real progress. I’m committed to advancing health equity and reimagining how global health institutions engage with low-resource settings, co-designing solutions with communities, sharing decision-making authority, and ensuring that evidence extracted doesn't just sit in PDF files, but transforms lives through justice and accountability — especially for the Global South.”