MCAH Alumni Rachel Hall utilizes leadership skills at Learning for Action

October 24, 2018

Headshot of Rachel Hall

MCAH Alumni Rachel Hall completed her Master in Public Health (MPH) & Master in Public Policy (MPP) at UC Berkeley. Since 2008, she's been employed with Learning for Action (LFA), a San Francisco-based organization, where she is Senior Consultant and Director of Talent.

LFA's mission is "to partner with social sector organizations to advance knowledge, capacity, and culture of learning in the service of equity and justice....engaging with organizations to collect and interpret the data they need to design and implement strategies that achieve their desired impact."
At LFA, Ms. Hall has worked with nonprofit, philanthropic, and government organizations conducting monitoring, evaluation, and learning system development and implementation, research, and capacity building.

The MCAH program interviewed Ms. Hall to gain insight into her role and the impact of Berkeley on her career. Ms. Hall shared with us that being able to draw on the skills and content from both programs allowed her to focus deeply on the MCH issues she cared about and helped her learn more about the policy lens and analysis skills that the MPP program fosters.


Q. How did your UC Berkeley MPH in MCAH prepare you for the work you do now, specifically your leadership role at LFA? What skills did you learn in the program that you currently utilize?

The MCAH program helped me cultivate a combination of deep subject matter knowledge and technical skills, and quantitative methods and analysis in particular. I regularly draw on the research methods experience I gained when I was at Berkeley. Most of my projects include qualitative and quantitative instrument development, data collection, and analysis. As a consultant, I’m working with a variety of different clients across sectors – philanthropy, nonprofits, and government entities – helping them engage in ongoing evaluation and learning processes and helping them strategically use that information for refinement and improvement. I honed these skills in my combined graduate programs, and I’ve been able to draw on and continue to build them at LFA.
The consulting-style projects and internships that were part of the MCAH and MPP course work were also incredibly valuable, enabling me to work on practical projects with different Bay Area organizations. Through them, I had opportunities to apply the skills I was learning in the MCAH program, build consulting skills, and develop a body of work that had real applications for the client organizations. Those projects were critical for preparing me to work in a consulting environment.

The program also fueled my passion for and commitment to improving health access and quality and addressing inequities in ALL communities. My focus in MCAH was on access to family planning services for adolescents and youth, as was my work experience prior to the program. Learning alongside other students and professionals who shared my commitment was inspiring. LFA is deeply rooted in our commitment to advancing social justice and equity; it is a lens we apply in every aspect of our work. The MCAH program at Berkeley trains public health professionals in alignment with those values and it’s been incredibly valuable to translate what I learned in the program to my work at LFA.

Q. Can you discuss any other aspects of the MCAH MPH program that helped you in your career path and your current role, such as building a network, specific courses or projects, faculty or other mentors, internships?

The internships and applied projects were among the most useful parts of my experience. Cheri Pies was an incredible advisor and mentor throughout my time at Berkeley. I also really appreciate having the local network for both the MCAH and MPP programs – there are many alumni working in organizations that we work with and I love meeting prospective students that are exploring social sector consulting careers after they complete the program.

Q. Can you talk a little about MCAH-specific projects you’ve worked on at LFA?

In working on these MCAH-related projects, I’ve formed rewarding partnerships with the foundations leading the work and with the organizations who are grantee partners. It’s been exciting to see the results of these initiatives and the contributions organizations are making to advancing RHRJ in the US and internationally. I love being partnering with these organizations to teach them about successes, challenges, and opportunities, and to use information generated through the evaluations to inform decision making and growth.


Evaluation of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Population and Reproductive Health Program, US Subprogram
For 8 years, we’ve worked with both the International programs and the US Subprogram of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Population and Reproductive Health program. We’ve partnered with them on monitoring, evaluation, and learning planning and implementation and strategy development. We currently work with the program in a Learning Partner capacity. I’ve been working with the US Subprogram on an evaluation of their work in Mississippi and Louisiana. And we’ve been evaluating how the combination of programmatic supports and organizational effectiveness supports (from the Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness program) contribute to building the strength of the individual organizations and, more broadly, the strengthening of the reproductive health, rights, and justice (RHRJ) field in those states.

Evaluation of the WISE (Working to Institutionalize Sex Ed) Initiative
I also direct the National Evaluation for the Working to Institutionalize Sex Ed (WISE) Initiative. WISE is a national initiative dedicated to institutionalizing sex education, so that sex education is part of schools’ ongoing curricula. LFA has been working with WISE since its inception in 2008. As the national evaluator, we have partnered with the funder leads to help identify a “WISE method” approach to institutionalizing comprehensive sex ed and to evaluate the impact of WISE, including number of students receiving new and improved sex ed and sex ed sustainability.

CoreAlign
I worked with CoreAlign in 2017, evaluating their fellowship programs in the field of RHRJ. We started with theory of change refinement, designed and implemented a mixed methods evaluation, and then developed products both for CoreAlign internally to inform programmatic growth, and also for external audiences to reflect the achievements and opportunities of the programs in advancing RHRJ.


Q. Any advice you would give to MCAH students or MCAH graduates early in their careers?

For current students, I encourage building technical skills and taking advantage of the expertise of faculty and other students. For both current students and recent graduates - we have a great alumni network and I’d encourage them to draw on that as they explore types of organizations they may want to work with, and the types of roles they’d like to play.