Heather Viola
Human Services/International Affairs, BA
2014
As a passionate high schooler who didn’t quite have a sense of which interests to pursue and where and how to direct them, Heather chose Northeastern. “After researching Northeastern’s many major offerings, as well as the experiential components of their academic programming, I knew that Northeastern would support my path of self discovery.”
Heather picked up new knowledge and skills in the classroom, and applied and transformed it in new contexts outside of the classroom
In her first-year service-learning class, Heather worked at the Boston Rescue Mission downtown, where she continued to volunteer for the next 4 years
She created her own co-op with Transition House, a domestic violence program in Cambridge, MA
Heather won the 2013 Gideon Klein Award for her research on children’s music in Terezin
On her DOC to Zambia, she worked with an NGO in Lusaka to provide social services to street youth that had been orphaned by HIV/AIDs.
In the Fall of 2016, Heather worked with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria.
Heather started pursuing her Master’s of Public Health specializing in Global Health and Population at Harvard in 2017.
She has worked at the Clinton Health Access Initiative as a Senior Associate of the Vaccines Program
She now serves as the Senior Manager for Primary Healthcare, Exemplars in Global Health Program at Gates Ventures.
“My human services experience has enhanced my academic development and experiential learning by demonstrating how one is not complete without the other. Everything that I learned in the classroom had direct implications for my work and experiences outside of the classroom. It deepened my understanding of complex social issues such as domestic violence, addiction, and homelessness through rigorous coursework and lessons in the classroom, and these issues are ones that I went on to work and volunteer in while living in Boston.”
