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A few graduates find themselves at the vanguard of catastrophe, working in fire service, medical response and even in the battle against global climate change.

While their career paths might not match those typically associated with �ʼһ��� grads, their brand of “leadership and service” distinguishes them during a particularly perilous era of recent history. Their work is a matter of life and death.

Here are some of their stories:

A medical career that began, literally, on the street

Nate Walcott took some detours on his way to medical school, one of them in an ambulance.

He worked as an emergency medical technician for a patient transport service near Philadelphia during COVID, working 12-hour shifts with a wide variety of cases.

Walcott had been interested in biology and science since high school. Ambulance work put him where he could indulge his curiosity. 

“Because I was interested in medicine, one of my favorite things was talking to the nurses about the patients and their medical situations,” said Walcott, who graduated from �ʼһ��� in 2016 with a biology degree.

Working during COVID meant special reliance on precautions, including professional masking gear and rigorous sanitation. In his role as an EMT, he said he felt respected by the public, particularly during the lockdown. 

His road to medical school at Wake Forest University got a hands-on boost during his study-abroad opportunity at �ʼһ��� when he went to Zambia in the summer of 2015. 

There, in the rural town of Mwandi, pop. 8,000, he worked with doctors, nurses and clinicians at the United Church of Zambia Mission Hospital delivering public health care while gaining  perspective at the intersection of religion, health and culture. 

After �ʼһ���, Walcott got a master’s degree in biomedical sciences at Wake Forest. Last fall, he started medical school there. 

Lessons learned from his time at �ʼһ���, Walcott said, have served him well in his pursuit of a medical career.  

“You learn critical thinking, problem solving, how to approach things from other angles,” he said. “And, how to carry a heavy workload.”

Rescuing a fragile world, from the ground up

When he wakes up and goes to work, Nicolas Cisneros knows his job is not to save the planet. His job is to help others do it.

He works through an international organization called the NDC Partnership to enable countries to meet their climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, and thus help adjust the thermostat of a warming Earth. He manages efforts in seven Latin American countries–Peru, Honduras, Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Paraguay.

Many countries, he said, have a willingness to tackle climate issues but also face endless economic and poverty challenges and have only limited means. 

But the NDC Partnership connects them to resources and technical assistance from more than  200 members, like the World Bank and the United Nations, to help plan, implement and finance climate change mitigation and adaptation measures, including in green energy, sustainable agriculture and other planet-friendly initiatives. The NDC Partnership also has mechanisms to give a voice in the process to young people, indigenous groups, women and civil society.

In his previous work with the Pacific Alliance, comprising Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, for example, he advised on development of long-term green growth strategies that align with national priorities and worked with the private sector to make more environmentally friendly investments. 

“We must assign a monetary value to nature,” said Cisneros, a 2009 economics graduate. “In the end, it’s a failure to do so that results in emissions levels.” 

A native of Ecuador, Cisneros said he was drawn to �ʼһ��� for its academic rigor and broad curriculum. “I explored everything from studio art, to Zen Buddhism and econometrics.”  

He concentrated on international studies and studied Chinese and French with an eye to a career in international investment banking. When the economy collapsed in 2008–the very day he was to start an internship at Charlotte-based Wachovia, its CEO left the bank–his career took an interesting turn toward global environmentalism.  

�ʼһ��� had given him an appreciation for the complex interconnected dynamics of moving toward sustainable development, including its economic, political and social dimensions. He went on to get a master’s degree in international affairs from The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, where he launched into a career at the United Nations Environment Program focusing on green economy and trade.

He has a passion for teaching younger generations about the strategic political and economic importance of sustainability, having served as an adjunct lecturer at Wake Forest University, teaching international environmental policy, sustainable strategy and innovation, and behavioral economics and sustainability.  

He knows the stakes involved in failing to reduce carbon emissions–more violent storms, raging wildfires, and other natural disasters that affect the world’s most vulnerable populations. He sees progress, but says much more must be done, best sooner than later. And he relishes that challenge. 

“It’s been lovely,” Cisneros said, “to wake up and serve that greater good.”

Recognizing the complex dynamics of an urban safety net

David Farnum came to �ʼһ��� as a Bonner Scholar, a program with a significant service obligation. Farnum served much of that with the �ʼһ��� Fire Department, and he still remembers, nearly a quarter-century later, fighting his first fire. He was one of three �ʼһ��� students with two veterans dispatched to a burning mill house.

The first time someone goes into a fire, he said, they know whether it’s for them or not. “They  know at that moment amidst the heat, smoke and controlled chaos,” said Farnum.  And while his job has changed, it’s still about people.

“It’s about those we work with,” he said. “It’s about the citizens, providing excellent, equitable service.”

Now instead of responding to calls dozens of times a day as he did for years, “my job is to make sure that those I have the privilege of leading are trained and equipped to respond quickly and effectively.” 

He is one of seven division chiefs in the Charlotte Fire Department (hold on to your helmet: yes, two at this high rank are �ʼһ��� grads). It’s a major urban department in one of America’s fastest-growing cities. It covers 316 square miles (nearly three times what the Atlanta Fire Rescue agency covers) with more than 250 people on duty a day. He goes to every major incident in the city of nearly 900,000.  

While Farnum has seen an uptick in public appreciation for the work of first-responders during the pandemic, he wishes the public had a better understanding of the broader social challenges communities face.

He sees the city’s problems from a street-level view, and since COVID hit, he’s seen them magnified.

“Community resilience is fragile or fractured right now,” Farnum said. Gaps in Charlotte’s social safety net have grown wider.

“COVID has pushed a lot of people into crisis,” he said, such as fear of eviction after jobs are lost. “Problems are not necessarily managed in a comprehensive way, and the community need is so great. About 450 times a day we roll out to fires, EMS runs, technical rescues and hazardous materials incidents. We address that immediate, acute need. We solve a problem and take great pride in doing so.” But, he said, the more extensive, comprehensive challenge is one that continues to vex him. 

As a manager in a complex organization, he draws on lessons he learned from �ʼһ���. 

Farnum is an English grad who, for a couple of years between operations roles, found himself leading his agency’s predictive analytics unit. An odd fit? Nope. An advantage.

�ʼһ��� taught him not to be intimidated by hard questions with no clear answers. 

“My primary role in the department for a couple of years was to drive innovation and problem-solving, while maintaining focus on long-term strategy, making sure that senior leadership had the information it needed to make well-informed decisions by tying disparate information together,” he said. “Making some of those key decisions now, and managing complex conversations and discussions, speaking to the ‘why’ by answering difficult questions directly, it all ties back to what I originally found myself doing at �ʼһ���.”

 And it ultimately ties back to the people.

“Over the last few years, like many senior leaders, I’ve had what amounts to a pretty obvious realization–that one of the only ways to ensure the projects and processes I’ve been a part of continue are to move to staff advocacy, active succession planning and to be a mentor. This means trusting those I work with, developing and empowering them.” 

Regarding the agency’s accreditation process, for instance, he has expanded what, historically, had been limited participation into comprehensive team projects, where each member contributes to the development of each part of every accreditation document. For these and other complex problems he sees on the job, Farnum said he places his faith in people–people who will take up the torch (or should we say the nozzle?) and walk it forward.