We’re excited to welcome Victoria Carty, who joined us as a summer intern on June 21. Victoria will be a senior at Franklin and Marshall College this fall, with a double major in Public Health and Spanish.
Where are you from and what brought you to Lancaster?
I actually grew up here! My family lived in the Philadelphia area for a few years, until I was about 4, and then we moved to Lancaster for my Dad’s job at F&M. I went away to boarding school for high school, and then came back to attend F&M.
What inspired you to choose majors in Public Health and Spanish?
I left high school thinking that I would go pre-med, and I always enjoyed the idea of trying to be involved in health policy to affect change at a higher level. When I got to the point at which I was deciding my major, Public Health seemed like a great medium between the two. I realized that being a physician would be a great opportunity to help families and individuals, but there is so much more work that needs to be done. I really enjoy politics, policy, and problem-solving, and my Public Health major allows me to get involved in all of those areas. As for Spanish, I have
Ecuadorian family and have been learning the language since 1 st grade. I really wanted to continue learning to become fluent. Paired with Public Health and thinking about the Lancaster community, Spanish will most definitely come in handy.
What projects will you do during your internship at LOHF? How will this prepare you for your
future plans?
I will be helping out with a variety of projects at LOHF, and I hope to get involved in a little bit of everything. My primary project will be to create a resources page for the LOHF Website to be able to make more information available publicly. I think spending time at LOHF will give me the opportunity to learn more about resources available to Lancastrians and experience working in my field of interest. Even just in the few days that I have been working on the resources page, I have been able to learn about so many interesting topics and how they apply directly to Lancaster.
What do you hope to learn or explore through this internship?
I hope to gain experience in my field, but more so I hope to absorb as much knowledge as possible. I would like to know how to apply the theoretical concepts I have learned in my courses to real-world scenarios, and to see how the knowledge that I have gained is pertinent to Public Health in practice.
What would you like your career focus to be after graduation?
I would like to focus on Health Policy affecting children and adolescents. When I thought that I would go pre-med, I wanted to be a pediatrician. Growing up, I had more than enough firsthand experience with the medical system, and I would love to influence policy that helps children and teens through hard times.
Tell us something interesting or surprising about yourself.
I am helping to open a school! Lancaster Friends School is opening in the fall. I was on the School Committee for a year, am interning for the summer, and will be teaching Spanish over the course of the year. I’m super excited to keep working on this!
Victoria can be reached at intern@lohf.org.
