Spring 2023 Health Informatics graduate, Grace Rousseau
Throughout my time in the Health Informatics (HI) program at Pitt, I have been presented with endless opportunities to grow and advance my career. One of those was the chance to apply to a summer internship with UPMC Health Plan. Once accepted, I worked as a clinical operations intern where I developed my skills in process improvement, analyzing data and creating dashboards. My experience at UPMC paved a path for my professional goals as I networked with the brightest UPMC employees and learned as much as I could about the corporate health care world. In addition to the hands-on and technical skills, the greatest value came from learning how much I loved working with people and finding ways to utilize everyone’s unique skills to better the team.
As much as I enjoyed my time with UPMC, I discovered that I wanted to be in a bit more of a functional versus a technical role, given my love of the human side of health care. After talking with peers from my internship, I realized that I wanted to try my hand in health care consulting. The fall of my senior year was filled with countless interviews and Zoom calls with past Health Informatics graduates who were more than happy to help me find my way. The HI community is one of its greatest strengths. I received many emails of different job postings related to our field from my professors. Any questions I had, I knew I could always reach out to my HI professors and they would find any way in their power to help me. After a stressful--but very doable--couple of months, I eventually got my dream offer from a consulting firm called FTI Consulting to be a health solutions consultant in Washington, D.C., after graduation!
Everything that I did during the interviews and job searching came from my time within the HI program. That is what is so incredible about this program--the professors don’t just stop with teaching students the science and information behind HI. They push you to learn about the real world and which soft skills will allow you to thrive in your future career. My professors have been there since day one of my internship search and were the first people I told about my job offer. I would not have gotten here without their endless support!
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Written by:
Grace Rousseau (BS ‘23)
Graduate of the University of Pittsburgh Health Informatics program
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Published June 2, 2023