Lynchburg gave me the confidence to sit at the table with some of the world’s leaders in public health and science. It also positioned me to pursue graduate school with a greater appreciation for writing well and performing my best in the classroom. As a first-generation college student, Lynchburg provided a nurturing environment to make mistakes, learn from them, and turn them into successes.
Major: Health Promotion (BS)
Jamar Hawkins ’04 is not only a Lynchburg graduate — he also serves on the University’s board of trustees. His day job, however, is as a senior policy coordinator and science and public health team leader for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C.
Jamar, who has been with HHS since 2006, has worked on important public health concerns like COVID-19 and the monkeypox outbreak. He’s also proud of a regulation he worked on that, as he puts it, “ensure[s] participants in human research studies are treated ethically, while reducing the burden on the research community.”
Jamar first became interested in bioethics in high school while attending what he describes as a “mini-medical school” at Georgetown University. Later, as a Lynchburg student, his professors helped him secure two internships that convinced him he wanted to spend his career at “the intersection of public policy and achieving positive health outcomes for people.”
