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Co-Founder and Executive Director, BLKHLTH
“Whenever I talk to people who are thinking about a career in public health, I tell them that getting my MPH from Rollins exponentially changed my earnings and my career projections. That’s because it gave me so much access to people, places, and organizations. It allowed me to have diverse experiences when I did not have a tremendous amount of prior public health experience.”
Almost seven years after graduating, Matthew McCurdy still looks back on his time as a Rollins student fondly and considers it a fundamental part of his professional journey.
“Whenever I talk to people who are thinking about a career in public health, I tell them that getting my MPH from Rollins exponentially changed my earnings and my career projections,” he says. “That’s because it gave me so much access to people, places, and organizations. It allowed me to have diverse experiences when I did not have a tremendous amount of prior public health experience.”
While a student in the department of behavioral, social, and health education sciences, McCurdy took advantage of that access to get involved in a variety of initiatives. He held a Rollins Earn and Learn position with Planned Parenthood, worked as a graduate research assistant on a project at Morehouse School of Medicine, and was a graduate assistant at the Carter Center. He also made time for campus involvement and community work with the Clarkston Rollins Connection, the Association for Black Public Health Students, and Students for Social Justice, which he helped found.
After graduation, McCurdy embarked on a career in the federal government, first as an ORISE fellow at CDC, and later as a Presidential Management Fellow in the Department of Health and Human Services. Through those experiences, he has found that the network and reputation that come along with being a Rollins alum have continually served him.
“I continue to find different ways that Rollins shows up,” he says. “Once, I was in a high priority meeting with the federal government. I said that I went to Rollins and the chief of staff in the room was like, ‘Oh, that's a great school’. It's instant credibility.”
The network that McCurdy built at Rollins includes three former classmates with whom he built a non-profit, BLKHLTH, which focuses on implementing programs and training that support the health and well-being of Black communities. The four started the organization shortly after their graduation in 2016, and it continued to grow from there. Since 2021, serving as the executive director of BLKHLTH has been his full-time job.
“Would I go to Rollins again? Absolutely,” he says. “It has definitely been a positive return on investment for me. I found purpose, and my time at Rollins really helped me align to my life mission, which to me is invaluable. I can't put a price on that.”