When They Were Students ft. David Wolking
'When They Were Students' is a feature highlighting the diverse and unique journeys of our OHI team members into their current One Health careers.
An Unconventional Journey to One Health
Hey, I’m David. I grew up in Detroit in the ‘80s and was into making bad films with friends, editing the high school literary magazine, hanging at Grateful Dead and Phish festivals in the Great Lakes region, and later anything boho, indie, or punk in and around Chicago and Detroit.
One of the questions we often get is “how did you get a job in One Health?” Honestly, I had never heard of One Health before 2006. I studied liberal arts and humanities. I joined Americorps in Detroit leading after school programs in the public schools. I landed a job with an NGO in Chicago later working as a social worker with immigrant children detailed by the US Customs and Border Protection that were waiting for hearings. I learned Spanish and hung out with kids from all over the world listening to their migration stories and supervising their calls home to the villages, comparing tattoos, teaching them English, helping find them pro bono legal assistance for asylum claims, throwing Friday night dance parties, and playing detention center barber. We crocheted a lot of beanies and watched a lot of bad action films.
Migration has drivers and I wanted to learn more, so I ended up in the Ecuadorian Amazon with a tribe called the Cofan and spent some time learning about indigenous and traditional life impacted by international policies, conflict, land use change, and extractive industries. Humbled by my naïveté and complete lack of technical skills, I decided to go back to school and ended up at UC Davis in their unique International Agricultural Development program. I never left...
The Next Chapter: UC Davis
At UC Davis I had a chance to work in project management with a USAID-funded program called the Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support program. In that role, I worked with the Health for Animals and Livelihood Improvement (HALI) project, led by the School of Veterinary Medicine’s Wildlife Health Center. HALI was putting One Health in practice, one of the earliest use cases trying to understand the links between health, livelihoods, and the environment in Central Tanzania, and working with pastoralists like the Maasai, national parks, and community managed conservation areas. I was hooked.
Working in One Health offered the complexity I craved intellectually and the social connections and leadership needed to make teams work together to solve complex problems. In 2009, UC Davis launched the One Health Institute, and I was lucky to join a team leading the USAID PREDICT project, a global program using the One Health approach to understand why and how diseases emerge from animals to people, and how to reduce risks and prevent pandemics.
15 years and a traumatic pandemic later I’m still working with amazing people all around the world on solutions to these same challenges. Every day I get to talk with brilliant scientists and team members in the US, Europe, Africa, and Asia on everything from identifying pandemic risks, exploring human behaviors associated with disease emergence, strengthening health systems, training the next generation One Health workforce, developing unique countermeasures for disease prevention, managing very complicated global teams through labyrinthian USG-funded awards, and importantly telling a lot of cool stories so we can keep the mission alive. I got to meet the world's fastest supercomputer Aurora, it's been an amazing journey.
Advice for Aspiring One Health Practitioners
A lot of people find their way to One Health through a technical pathway like veterinary medicine or public health, but there are some of us that wind up here on an unorthodox path, a testament to the diversity of disciplines needed to make the One Health approach successful. I don’t have any real advice aside from be curious, adventurous, listen, offer to help, and find humor and fun in difficult and challenging circumstances. Sometimes not having a “set” plan, but being open to learn, meet new people, and share a laugh opens doors to a dream job. Also, be brave and do what seems right to you. Sometimes jobs open and pathways too, but always be true to your values and who you are.