PLU and Peace Corps Alumni Panel

As part of the biennial Ambassador Chris Stevens Celebration of Service, there will be a panel presentation by PLU and Peace Corps alumni – Margaret Chell ’18, Colin Hartke ’08,  Annē (Hoblitt) Linn ’08 – on the topic of, Reflection on Community Health Service in a Global Context . Former Ambassador Chris Stevens served in the Peace Corps in Morocco.

Margaret Chell ’18 (she/her/hers) graduated from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington with a degree in Global Studies. Highlights of her time at PLU include volunteering at the Neighborhood Clinic in downtown Tacoma, spending a semester studying public health in Vietnam, South Africa, and Argentina, and playing ultimate frisbee. Shortly after graduating, she joined Peace Corps Guinea as a Public Health Education volunteer. While in Guinea, her projects focused on technological literacy with health care workers and nutrition-sensitive agriculture with subsistence farmers. Margaret is now working on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer. She works with the Massachusetts General Hospital Rural Health Leadership Fellowship program and the Indian Health Services to support and build the capacity of the health systems on the reservation. She will be starting medical school this year with the goal of becoming a primary care physician in rural and resource-denied areas.

Colin Hartke ’08 served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mozambique (2012-2014). During his service, he worked with a health clinic and community groups on prevention and care activities (mainly focused on HIV and malaria). He also collaborated with a small farming co-operative to help the farmer-owners set up systems and processes that helped them drive growth. Colin studied Communications (Journalism) and Spanish at PLU. He received his Master’s in Public Health from the University of Washington. His career has focused on health communications. Currently, he leads member communications for Accolade, a health advocacy organization and volunteers in work to improve environmental health.

Annē (Hoblitt) Linn (’08) graduated from PLU with majors in French, Spanish and Global Studies. She subsequently continued her education with a Master’s in Public Health from Tulane University, with a concentration in international health and development. She chose to maximize her graduate school experience by participating in the Peace Corps Masters International Program, which combines graduate studies with Peace Corps Service. As a Preventive Health Education volunteer in rural Senegal, Annē led programs to build cervical cancer prevention services in rural communities and for harm reduction programs around mercury exposure in gold mining communities. Her primary project was leading a pilot study of a proactive model of community case management of malaria that showed significant impact at reducing the burden of malaria and was subsequently scaled up throughout Senegal. Ms. Linn spent several years working for Johns Hopkins University on the Demographic and Health Surveys Program supporting national statistical agencies and ministries of health in developing countries on the use of health data for decision making. For the past two years, she has served as a malaria technical advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), supporting the work of the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative.