Molly Fitzgerald 2010
Molly Fitzgerald spends much of her time in the West African crisis and conflict areas of Liberia and Sierra Leone, working to ensure that people have access to primary and preventative health care. Her passion for helping to meet the needs of others was born early, and in many ways began to take shape in the diverse hallways of T.C. Williams.
After receiving a scholarship from the Scholarship Fund of Alexandria for her community service involvement, Molly attended Davidson College and majored in French. She went on to study health and human rights in conflict situations at Johns Hopkins University and received a PhD. from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“When I look back on my time at T.C.,” Molly says, “I realize that I never really understood what some of my classmates whose families were refugees or immigrants had faced, or the obstacles they had overcome just be able to be here in Alexandria. To have a house, food and access to medical care. To be able to go to school and make a better life. I took the diversity of T.C. Williams for granted, never really understanding what it represented until I began to work with refugees and immigrants after college.”
Molly worked with refugee populations in California as a volunteer with VISTA (now AmeriCorps) and later joined the Peace Corps where she was posted to Togo in West Africa. Struck by the ways in which African communities care for and support their members despite the challenges they face, Molly saw public health as a way to make a difference. Now working as a public health advisor for John Snow International, a public health research and consulting firm, Molly is helping to make basic health care more universally available.
T.C. Williams, Class of 1988
B.A., French, Davidson College, 1992
M.P.H., Johns Hopkins University, 1998
DrPH, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2007
