NSBE - Convention 2018 - 66

Kara Odom Walker,
from Engineer to M.D.
Former NSBE Leader Makes Good as Delaware's Health
and Social Services Secretary

V

iewed through the lens of NSBE's mission, Kara Odom Walker, M.D., is a prime example of professional success. A NSBE chapter president, regional officer and national
academic excellence chair while she earned her bachelor's in chemical engineering,
on a full academic scholarship, at the University of Delaware, she now serves as Health
and Social Services secretary in the Cabinet of Delaware Gov. John Carney, overseeing one of
the largest agencies in the state. Dr. Walker earned her M.D. at Jefferson Medical College, in
Philadelphia, Pa., and has worked as a family physician in primary care settings and as a professor of medicine. She has an M.P.H. from The Johns Hopkins University and a master's in health
services research from UCLA, where she also completed a postgraduate fellowship. In 2017,
she left her previous job, which was helping to guide national healthcare policy and managing a $1.6-billion budget for five years as deputy chief science officer of the Patient-Centered
Outcomes Research Institute.
But what has encouraged her to climb that career path? It turns out the answer is at the very
end of NSBE's mission statement: "positively impact the community." She spoke with NSBE
Magazine recently about her life of service and what has helped her along the way.
What sparked your interest in chemical engineering?
I grew up in the state of Delaware, which historically has been
a place of huge commitment to science and technology careers.
The state's economy was built on the DuPont company, and families worked around chemical engineering plants. Also, chemical
engineering caught my interest because I was really enthralled
with science and math in general, in school, and it just seemed
like a natural extension of some of the areas of interest that I
had. But I also was very interested in the intersection with health
and healthcare and thought maybe one day I would be in the
pharmaceutical industry.
I think in some practical ways it was also my parents' encouragement that even if I was thinking about being a pre-med
student, that it might be useful to have a backup career plan in
place.

PHOTOS BY JEFFREY

How did you stay excited about a STEM career when so
many other black kids don't?
Both of my parents were educators.... Because of their commitment to education as a path forward, I was involved with all
kinds of programs during the summer and during the school
year: academic enrichment programs. One of the programs that
made a big difference in my younger years was a program called
66 * CAREER ENGINEER * CONVENTION 2018 *

FAME, the Forum to Advance Minorities in Engineering. The
state had invested in the fact that they needed more minorities
in engineering, and on Saturday mornings I would get up early
and do SAT prep. They would have people who had careers
in science and engineering talk to us on the weekends. In the
summers, it would be a six- to eight-week commitment to do academic enrichment to prepare you for pre-algebra and chemistry
class. And I really benefited from that. I'm certain my SAT scores
were higher because they were challenging us on the important
SAT vocabulary words that we had to memorize and know, and
also on test prep and readiness. And they made science fun! I
must say, the teachers who were committed to doing those kinds
of academic enrichment programs were really talented and really
inspired by helping minorities succeed. They were really interested in making us excited about science and math. And that just
made a big difference.
You did vaccine research while you were pursuing
your bachelor's in chem-E. How did you learn about
engineering career paths like that, from being in the
FAME program?
Yes, I did. Also, the fact that NSBE existed was really huge. I
didn't necessarily know the name NSBE, but we met NSBE students and alumni who were pursuing their engineering careers....
www.nsbe.org


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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NSBE - Convention 2018

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NSBE - Convention 2018 - Cover1
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NSBE - Convention 2018 - 1
NSBE - Convention 2018 - Contents
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