Since the age of 5, Michelle Lyden, BC '91, knew she wanted to work with children in Africa. If she were told at 5 years old that this desire would lead her to create her own nonprofit organization, subsequently placing her in the company of the president of the United States and leaving her to serve as counsel for government officials throughout Africa, she would have thought it was a lie. But after creating Global Action, Lyden has already worked within Rwanda and Tanzania to impact global health policies, even meeting former President Bill Clinton in 2006.
Lyden, who also did her graduate work at Boston College, graduating in '95, still remembers watching the commercials about the famine in Ethiopia and seeing children starving and dying on the side of roads on television. She remembers her father trying to explain to a 5-year-old the inequities of the world, something that she still struggles with. She remembers a desire to change what she saw. "It really struck me and it always has stayed with me," Lyden said.
Lyden took her first step toward her dream when she graduated from the Connell School of Nursing in 1991. After graduating, Lyden started working with children diagnosed with AIDS at the Children's Hospital of Boston. Working in pediatric AIDS during a time when the disease was still misunderstood, Lyden said she most enjoyed the psychosocial aspect of her work that included a look at the stigmatization and discrimination that came with the disease.
Then, in 2002, Lyden started working as a nurse practitioner for a family from South Africa. With her experience working in pediatric AIDS, she soon realized that the family's 15-month-old infant was positive for HIV. With this knowledge, she faced the difficult task of telling the parents, who refused to get tested themselves due to an ongoing fear of discrimination from both their village and their families. The 15-month-old baby, however, could die within the next two months without the proper medication, Lyden said.
2008 Woodie Awards
