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“The really great thing about getting my PhD is that I now have those skills to do deep work. I applied to academic jobs as well, but in the end I was offered a job at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. I’m going to be in a place where people make decisions that have an impact on a lot of people. It’s exciting to know that I’m going to be able to use these skills learned at ����vlog���� to think answer deeper questions.”

A culmination of experiences and education leads Heath to the final step of her PhD journey. Heath will graduate in May 2024 and then begin her new role working in the health division of the Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In addition to her main duties, she will also be conducting independent research. This position allows her to return to government at a federal level and have that impact on people on the ground, fulfilling the desire she had as an undergraduate to address broader systemic issues.

In 2019—during the second year of her PhD program—Heath applies to the and is accepted. The program, which begins during her third year, is a funded fellowship opportunity for Harvard PhD students in the social sciences who advance a new generation of research on inequality, wealth concentration, and mobility. The three-semester sequence combines multidisciplinary training in social science research on inequality and a structured setting in which to advance Scholars’ own research on inequality.

Heath’s program moves online because of the pandemic—as many classes and programs did during this time. Her cohort of students come from a variety of disciplines and are all invested in social policy and equity. In the final semester of the program, each Scholar writes a paper, and a session is reserved for peers to discuss and critique it. An outside expert in academia joins the sessions to speak to the class and engage in the discussions and critiques.

“I got to work with a lot of state data, which was amazing. I was doing performance management for a lot of contracted programs and building systems to analyze the data in real time and tell various agencies how they could improve their services. It was fun and allowed me to use all of the skills I learned with my MPP.”

GPL supports state and local governments across the United States working to solve serious social challenges. Heath begins work with the GPL and is placed in Rhode Island’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families. There she works with the public health department, programs to prevent child abuse and neglect, newborn screening programs, home visiting programs, and more.

She learns more about the U.S. and how the government functions. This experience shapes Heath’s interests and leads her to start thinking about the next steps in her career. She decides that pursuing a PhD would be the best choice.

After applying and getting into three MPP programs, Heath elects to attend ����vlog����. She begins the program with a plan to learn all that she can, improve her skill set, and apply it to her work in education policy in the U.K. Her plans change, however, when she meets her now-wife in her statistics class. 

After graduating from Oxford, Heath begins teaching at Burnage Academy for Boys in Manchester. While teaching at the Academy, she receives a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education from the University of Manchester in 2012.