Kayleigh Barrett
Logistics and Financial Coordinator, Social Media Co-Lead & Co-Founder, she/her/hers
Kayleigh Barrett is an MPH candidate in the Sociomedical Sciences Department with a certificate in Public Health Research Methods at the Mailman School of Public Health. She received her bachelor’s degree in International Studies with an emphasis in Global Health and Development and a minor in African Studies at the University of Oregon. At the end of her senior year, Kayleigh studied abroad in Durban, South Africa for three months and focused her research thesis on the power dynamics found in research relationships and the ethical implications of the use of over-studied populations in student academic research.
Post-graduation, she worked for three years as a Research Scientist at the University of Washington in the Division of Allergy and Infectious Disease on a structural genomics research pipeline for an early structure-based drug design program, targeting several pathogens. There she managed a small team of undergraduate students, practiced NIAID grant writing, prepared and published 5 team manuscripts as well as managed the research center’s social media presence and outreach (Center for Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Disease).
While at Columbia, Kayleigh was involved in a student-run public health online journal, Intervene Upstream, where she managed the social media outreach and content team as well as contribute the majority of the site’s artwork (issue covers, article accompaniments, media posts, branding, etc.). She was also selected for the Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics and Culture fellowship that explores the implications and benefits of personalized medicine with a diverse, inter-departmental group of doctoral and graduate students through a lecture series co-sponsored by Columbia Precision Medicine & Society and the CSSD. Kayleigh has website design and management experience which she uses to assist the Sociomedical Sciences Department. Her research and career interests include infectious diseases, medical anthropology, gender equity, mixed-methods research, research ethics, and health communications.