Student Spotlight: Jessica Maciel
Meet Jessica Maciel, a first-generation college student who is working on her M.P.H. with a focus in Health Promotion from the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She expects to graduate in December of 2027.
Maciel graduated with a degree in sociology from New Mexico State in 2022. Her coursework gave her more exposure to healthcare and after graduating, she began volunteering at a health clinic in Riverside, Calif. She used that time to decide what her path into healthcare might be, but her continued exposure to disadvantaged populations pushed her away from the provider track. Instead, she hopes to become an educator, advocate, and someone who can help shape policies in the future.
That desire to be an advocate has also shaped her student experience. Maciel worked for a year as a student employee for the Confidential Advocacy Program.
“I think [CAP] does amazing work and they’ve helped me so much, exploring what I want to do and what I’m interested and how that connects to experiences I’ve had; that really has empowered me and I really think they’ve been a pillar of my development and my ongoing interests in public health,” Maciel said.
Maciel will take that desire and advocacy experience into her new role as the vice president of marketing for All-Hill Student Council in 2026-27. She knows that she will enjoy the chance to reach out to the student community and is excited to work with the rest of the executive board to shape the messaging of AHSC plans and opportunities in the upcoming academic year.
Maciel still has time to explore future goals and ambitions before graduation but she already knows that Portland, Ore., as a home is the goal. She has fallen in love with Portland for its community and culture and hopes to get a job in the healthcare policy workspace. The specific role is still to be decided, but she is open to a variety of options for now and will narrow focus in the future.
One of the ways she hopes to narrow that goal includes a current job working for the Oregon Primary Care Association supporting their policy team. She has an admin support position and gets to observe a variety of efforts they support, including lobbying, translating policy and communicating it to the health care centers they work with.
“[Working as a] health policy analyst sounds really cool; anything that’s deep in the weeds with policy work and advocacy is my dream right now,” Maciel said. “I don’t have a dream role in mind, but I really want there to be an aspect of advocacy and of prevention education. Both of those things are really important to me.”
Written by Seth Preuss, OHSU Senior Communications Specialist