NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, November 24, 2014

The Global Health Corps co-founder argues that the nonprofit health care world needs workers with expertise in business, engineering, and communications.

In 2008, Barbara Bush launched Global Health Corps., a nonprofit that matches young people with health and development organizations in the U.S. and Africa for a year-long fellowship. At the time, she was 26 and had just quit her job at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York City.

Though she had artistic aspirations, Bush had been struck by what she saw more than a decade ago on a visit to Africa. Her father, then-President George W. Bush, unveiled a plan to combat AIDS on the continent; there were chaotic lines of people waiting in the streets for antiretroviral drugs that were readily available in the U.S. She wanted to help.