Kerenne Joseph
Background: Medical Doctor, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the Notre-Dame University
Placement: McLean Hospital / HBTRC, Senior Clinical Research Assistant
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Kerenne Joseph is an internationally-trained physician from Haiti. She moved to Massachusetts three years ago to avoid the political turbulence of her home country and create a safer life for herself and her son.
Kerenne is a certified medical doctor with a degree from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the Notre-Dame University of Haiti. Although she had completed her medical training, she did not begin working in the medical field directly upon her move to Massachusetts. She worked as a clerk at the Malden City Clerk’s Office. She is an interpreter/translator for Rosetta Languages and a Notary Public.
She completed the Cambridge Health Alliance Learning Institute Community Health Worker Training program and did a 3-month internship as a Community Health Worker with CHA. There, she had the responsibility of working directly with the Haitian community. She stresses the importance of having representation of your community in healthcare positions, “I think they need someone who represents them. If each community has someone like that, it probably will make a difference in their everyday life.”
Kerenne learned about the Immigrant Professionals Fellowship through a fellow from the previous year’s cohort. She realized this was the opportunity she needed to reignite her career in medicine and get a position in a great hospital. She did not know what the outcome would be, but she took the risk anyway, “I just took a chance. I didn’t even know if I was gonna have to resign from my job to do the Fellowship…I decided to give myself a chance.”
Her decision paid off and she is now working full-time at McLean Hospital in the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center as a Senior Clinical Research Assistant. Kerenne encourages others to take the risk, “Always go and take your chance to try new things, because you never know where that might take you.”
