Learning from the Past to Heal the Future
After a family member became ill during the COVID-19 pandemic, then 18-year-old Johari Tello (LA’26) secured a job as a nursing assistant in a makeshift COVID-19 unit. Today, she is a graduate student completing dual master’s degrees in history and public health.
"Working in the healthcare sphere during COVID, I learned firsthand what the medical system is truly like," Tello recalls.
Tello’s original plan was to attend classes at a local nursing school, but her experience during the pandemic left her frustrated with the structural and organizational failures of modern healthcare.
Having already applied to the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue, Tello officially enrolled on the Monday classes began. She was left with a random collection of classes, including one that completely reshaped her trajectory: a course on the history of women’s health.
"That one class opened up a whole new can of worms," Tello says. "It mixed my passion for healthcare with a passion for historical work that I hadn't realized how much I loved." Within a month, she changed paths to pursue a major in history.
Building an education across disciplines
Tello completed her core requirements rapidly, allowing her to begin taking master’s-level courses during her senior year.
She broke new ground as the first student to graduate from Purdue with a specialized Bachelor of Arts in the history of science, technology, and medicine — a new degree path under the history department. She also earned a Bachelor of Arts in history, minors in political science and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, and a certificate in medical humanities.
Tello’s diverse achievements earned her CLA’s Outstanding Senior Award, a recognition that caught her entirely off guard. While she used to think certain milestones were just pure luck, she now recognizes they are the result of a lot of hard work. She maintains that taking an interdisciplinary approach gave her the skills and perspective she needed to approach opportunities with confidence and sensitivity.
Bringing history into health care
Tello takes the same approach in graduate school. Driven by a desire to understand how marginalized communities navigate the healthcare sphere, she chose to concurrently pursue a Master of Public Health (MPH) and a master's in the history of medicine. Her research involves scientific exploration and historical analysis — a combination she says is essential for impacting patient care structures.
"I couldn't have the same love and appreciation for healthcare without the historical context that CLA gave me,” she explains. “It's a common misconception that medicine is only about raw science and leading scientific research. But at the end of the day, medicine is social. You are dealing with people of all different backgrounds and cultures, especially at the bedside.”
a cervical cancer patient advocacy nonprofit.
Tello spent four years accumulating vital clinical experience as a patient care technician at Franciscan Health Alliance. She also interned as a writer and researcher for Cervivor, Inc., a cervical cancer patient advocacy nonprofit. That internship allowed her to combine research and patient storytelling to uplift the real-world experiences of those impacted by the disease.
“I started doing historical research into how cervical cancer has been treated over time,” she says, “and I got a lot of experience writing in a non-academic context. It helped me become a more well-rounded student and member of the community.”
Now, her career is coming full circle. Tello recently stepped into a position at Franciscan Health as a program specialist within their education department. In this role, she works with nursing students to roll out innovative educational programming, seamlessly blending her clinical background with her academic research into medical education.
“When it comes to the sciences and humanities, you can’t have one without the other,” she says. “It’s good to branch out.”
Tello encourages other students to value community outreach, noting that while academic excellence is vital, connecting your work to the broader community adds undeniable depth and purpose to an education.
"Embrace the unexpected,” she advises, “and be really open-minded to the different opportunities that will come to you."
Planning to remain in the healthcare field and interested in studying health law, Tello is allowing her CLA education guide her next steps.