HSM Student Profile: Seve Gaskin (Class of 2022)
Prior Education: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Hometown: Charlotte, NC
Nationality: USA/Trinidad & Tobago
Why I Chose Fuqua
Three reasons. First, the Health Sector Management certificate program. Second, Fuqua’s collaboration with the Sanford School of Public Policy and the Master of Public Policy + Master of Business Administration dual-degree track. Third, the people and “Team Fuqua”!
Before Fuqua
I was an engagement manager with Optum Advisory Services—the health care consulting division of Optum and UnitedHealth Group. My day-to-day focused on helping health care provider clients (e.g., hospitals, health systems, and start-ups) improve their financial operations and financial strategy.
Must-take Health Care Courses
1) High Value Health Care Reform: Learn from Dr. Mark McClellan—a former administrator of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid services and former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—about public and private approaches to transforming health care in the United States. Students interested in the health care industry from any of Duke’s graduate and professional schools can take this course and get to work with public and private-sector clients on a semester-long consulting project related to value based care. I loved the interdisciplinary and experiential nature of this course.
2) Management of Health Systems & Policy: The highlight of this course was spending a week in Washington, DC, and meeting with health care leaders across the public, private, and social sectors. Students learn how health policy is made at the federal and state level and how firm managers and policymakers can respond. In addition to the course content, I loved having a mix of Daytime MBA, Global Executive MBA, Weekend Executive MBA, Master of Public Policy, and Medical Doctor/MBA students in the course and learned a lot from my classmates’ diverse perspectives.
3) Health Analytics & Innovation: Take this course if you want to understand what “Big data,” “AI,” “ML,” “NLP,” “data lake,” “neural networks,” and other analytics buzzwords mean. This course was led by a former Chief Analytics Officer of a major academic medical center—who made the content accessible and actionable. I loved learning how Analytics can support innovation in health care and am confident that I will be a more effective partner to data architects, engineers, and scientists throughout my career in consulting and beyond.
After Fuqua
I will return McKinsey & Company and continue to explore the vast health care industry—from payers, digital health companies, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, state health agencies, etc. Eventually, I want to become a key player and decision-maker at a large health care organization and focus on solving complex health care issues at the intersection of the public and private sectors.
The Health Sector Management (HSM) Track
The Health Sector Management (HSM) certificate is one of the main reasons I wanted to pursue an MBA at Fuqua. The HSM program offers academic, professional, and social opportunities that were compelling. I wanted to build on my years of experience working with health providers to learn more about various health care industry subsectors such as medical devices, digital health, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology. I also love having a cohort of over a hundred classmates, now friends, that share my passion for health care and are interested in making an impact in different parts of the industry.