Commitments for 2023: 1,000 members into The Club + writing

Sujani 0:00
Welcome to 2023. How are you feeling?

Welcome to PH SPOTlight, a community for you to build your public health career with. Join Us Weekly right here. And I’ll be here too, your host Sujani Siva from PH SPOT. I hope you took some time to reflect on the beautiful memories that you’ve created over the past year, and are now looking at the year ahead and thinking about all the great memories you’re about to create. I love New Years. Personally, I love to celebrate the beginning of new possibilities. I feel this level, I don’t know that just some level of newness and hope around this time. And I personally find it so powerful, right, there’s just like, great energy around. And I always believe that we can really use that energy at the beginning of the year to propel us forward to move ahead in whatever goals that we have set for ourselves. And so today, I wanted to jump on here to not only wish you a Happy New Year, but also to share with you what I’m looking forward to this year and what I’m committing to and the goals that I have set out for us as a community. So here goes.

The first thing I am looking forward to this year, and something that I’m going to be working extremely hard in is growing the public health career club, we are now a community of just over 100 individuals who have committed to working on their public health careers together. And my goal by the end of 2023, is to grow this community of public health career club members to 1000 people. The goal I have is to create this amazing community of supportive changemakers in the field of public health, who aren’t just doing impactful work in the world, but who are being supported in their careers and who can, you know, have the courage and the tools and the resources and the support to show up as their authentic self. It’s not something that I’ve done in the past, in my own career, I you know, now that I reflect on it, I don’t think I have shown up as my true self. But in most recent years, I have worked really hard to find ways to be comfortable to show up as me in the work that I do. And slowly within kind of the public or the PH SPOT products that we’re releasing, whether it’s the newsletter, this podcast, or through my writing on LinkedIn, I’ve certainly tapped into that. And I’m feeling more and more courageous to show up as my authentic self. And so I want to do the same for you and others in public health, I want to create this community where we are able to show up as ourselves, know that we have support from each other from other like minded individuals. And together, I know that we can build the courage to be ourselves and then go out into the world and do what we do best, which is public health work. And so this year, that’s my goal. And that’s what I’m working towards bringing together 1000 members who are committed to not only doing amazing things in the world, within the field of public health, but are also are committed to themselves, who are committed to show up as themselves who are committed to just achieving some huge goals for themselves. So that’s the first thing that I’m very much looking forward to.

The second thing that I am very much looking forward to is my writing. I’ve talked about this a little bit how, last year 2022 not too far ago, I began writing on LinkedIn. I started riding around the end of November, almost every day. It’s connected me to amazing individuals in public health, and I’ve been able to offer my views and share my reflections in very vulnerable ways about growing in my career. And most importantly, I’m thoroughly enjoying that process of reflecting and writing. It’s a hobby that I used to enjoy when I was younger, and had kind of, you know, hadn’t had opportunities to continue it. So I stopped writing over the past few years, maybe a decade. And now I found a platform that I feel very aligned with, which is LinkedIn, and I’m really liking it. So in 2023, I’m committing to not only writing on LinkedIn, but seeing how else I can incorporate the reflective writing that I really like, into my work. Other platforms like some mainstream media channels. And, you know, I’ve always thought about perhaps publishing a book in the future. And so perhaps I’m gonna get inspired to put some thoughts down around it on paper for the first time. There’s also a great journalism fellowship at the University of Toronto School of Public Health that I’ve had my eye on for a number of years. And I’m still thinking if I have the bandwidth to take that on. But, you know, these are all, I guess, active steps that I’m taking towards ensuring that I’m doing something I enjoy, which is writing and thinking about how I can incorporate it back into my public health career. And also, back to my PH SPOT community. So I think, you know, unlike my goal of bringing in 1000 members into the public health career club, this goal of continuing to write more isn’t really flushed out too much. But I think what I do know is that there’s going to be lots of opportunities, and I’m going to seek out, put myself out there, and just write and see where that takes me.

So that’s me for 2023. And I hope you have a list that you’re working on that allows you to show up as your authentic self and gets you closer to living your dream public health career. And, you know, I think if you can just choose one or two things that you’re really going to commit to, tell people. By telling people we ensure that others are also on board with our goals and who knows what doors they can open up, right? And if you want to hang out with us in the public health career club, we definitely want you there. If you need support in working towards these goals that you’re committing to we can help you there. And you can sign up for the waitlist at pHspot.org/club. We will be likely opening things up at the end of this month. So the best place to kind of stay up to date is via that list via email. And until next week, take care Happy New Year. And here’s to amazing memories in 2023.