Jenna Marie Smith

Profile

While earning my degree, my greatest supporters were:
My parents and siblings, great friends turned study partners, and my sweet husband!

What I enjoyed most about my experience at BYU was:
Definitely the people and relationships that I've gained while at BYU--they make all the difference! I have enjoyed connecting with fellow students, faculty members and being a part of the BYU community. I came to BYU with high hopes of earning a great education, but those hopes were far surpassed! In retrospect, I am even more amazed at the many incredible opportunities I was given at BYU to travel, grow, lead out and apply skills in real life settings.

While earning my degree I was involved in the following clubs/organizations:
I was involved for short periods of time with BYUSA's Student Advisory Council as the Life Science Representative, Student Alumni's Choose 2 Give Campaign, and the Kennedy Center's maternal health project "MAAME" as the digital marketing specialist. I worked at BYU Enrollment Services for over a year, and enjoyed helping thousands of students/parents on their BYU journey. My favorite involvement, however, was definitely the work I did as a teaching and research assistant for multiple department professors.

I plan to use my degree to:
Serve marginalized populations in order to make healthy living the easy choice for everyone. I am passionate about a wide variety of issues ranging from empowerment of refugees to reducing chronic disease. I am excited to find a career that will allow me to work on reducing risk factors such as lack of nutritional balance or access to healthy foods, inadequate physical activity, as well as examining how I can help shape the the built environment (infrastructure) in a community to increase one's ability to engage in healthy behaviors.

Now that I have completed the program, I'm most looking forward to:
Using my degree! I know it's fairly common to earn a degree yet work in an unrelated field, but because I loved my experience in the Public Health program so much I knew that I didn't want that to be my story. I am grateful for the life skills I have gained in this program, and am looking forward to beginning the Master's of Public Health program at BYU this fall!