Careers in Public Health Panel – Fall 2025
Whether you’re curious about what a career in public health looks like or you’re ready to take the next step in building yours, this panel is for you. VCU alumni and public health leaders are looking forward to answering your questions and sharing their experiences with you.
Event Details
- Tuesday, November 11, 2025
- 12 – 1 p.m.
- SGA Senate Chambers, 907 Floyd Ave, Richmond, VA 23284
- Register here
Light refreshments will be provided, thanks to the VCU Office of Development and Alumni Relations.
Panelists
- Ben Barber, Board President of the Virginia Public Health Association
- Keighly Bradbrook, Ph.D., (Ph.D.’20), Senior Biostatistician at United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS)
- Vickie Gogo, Senior Partner at ICF, a global consulting firm based in Northern Virginia
- Alton Reid, M.P.H., (B.S.‘13), public health doctoral student at Rutgers University
- Tierah M. West, M.P.H., (B.S.‘16) (M.P.H.‘19), Director of Early Childhood Analytics and Technology in the Virginia Department of Education’s Division of Early Childhood Care and Education
Moderator: Daniel Brisker, (B.S.’09), consumer safety officer for the FDA and co-leader of the DMV Alumni chapter.
More about our panelists
Ben Barber is an accomplished public health and nonprofit leader with over a decade of experience shaping state health policy. He serves as Board President of the Virginia Public Health Association, a statewide nonprofit organization that strengthens public health practice, fosters health equity, and promotes sound public health policy. Previously, he served as Interim Chief Executive Officer and Vice President of Policy at Virginia Health Catalyst, where he led the organization through a leadership transition while advancing its work to ensure all Virginians have equitable access to comprehensive health care, including oral health.
Ben has led coalitions to achieve significant public health policy achievements. Major policy wins include securing legislation that allows qualified public health professionals to lead local health districts, resulting in all districts having a permanent director. Additionally, he partnered with several public health leaders to secure $6.4 million in the state budget to support community health workers in localities with the highest rates of maternal mortality.
Keighly Bradbrook, Ph.D., received her Ph.D. in biostatistics from VCU. Keighly works at the United Network for Organ Sharing in Richmond as a senior biostatistician where she supports the evaluation and development of national deceased donor organ allocation policy. She originally specialized in heart allocation research after which she moved into renal transplant and has since widened her research to other organs and topics. Keighly has worked on a variety of projects while at UNOS including agent-based simulation modeling, public policy monitoring, publishing and dashboard development. Most recently, Keighly has been collaborating with Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) on a new, more data-driven framework for policy optimization and design. Outside of UNOS, Keighly has taught applied statistical analysis and SAS programming as an adjunct faculty member in the VCU School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology.
Vickie Gogo is a senior partner at ICF, a global consulting firm based in Northern Virginia. Her career has spanned from sports journalism to higher education PR; however, for the past 25 years, she has supported a host of clients through communications, marketing, stakeholder engagement and community outreach—all in an attempt to help them better engage their communities. Much of her work has been focused on helping clients authentically engage with multicultural communities, communities that have been historically underserved, and communities that have had limited access to resources. Her clients have included the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, US Food and Drug Administration, Health Resource and Services Administration, Office of Minority Health, and others like Virginia Department of Health and DC Department of Health. She has developed campaigns addressing a variety of health topics—infant mortality; maternal health; chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, stroke and cancer; health conditions like chronic kidney disease and sickle cell disease; along with infectious diseases like COVID-19, HIV/AIDS and flu. Vickie’s work also includes addressing climate and energy; education; transportation and driver safety; elder issues; and housing and homelessness.
Vickie, a nearly life-long resident of Virginia, earned her bachelor’s degree from Hampton University and her master’s degree from Old Dominion University. She also has certificates from Harvard and Stanford, in Addressing Racial Disparities in Healthcare and Nutrition Science, respectively. She is accredited in public relations by the Public Relations Society of America. Vickie has won more than 2 dozen industry awards for her work and her contributions to the field of public relations.
Alton Reid, M.P.H., is a Health Insurance Specialist for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Department of Health & Human Services. Alton graduated from VCU with a B.S. in Biology and earned his Master of Public Health from Drexel University. He is now seeking his Dr.P.H. from Rutgers University. Prior to his role at HHS, he worked as a health scientist in the Office of the Inspector General at the Environmental Protection Agency.
In 2024, Alton received VCU Alumni’s 10 Under 10 Award, a list of outstanding alumni who earned their first VCU degree within the past 10 years and enjoyed remarkable success, made important contributions to their community and/or loyally supported the university in that time. Alton is a co-leader of the DMV Alumni chapter and helped organize this panel.
Tierah M. West, M.P.H., currently serves as the Director of Early Childhood Analytics and Technology in the Virginia Department of Education’s Division of Early Childhood Care and Education. In this role, Tierah oversees the state’s data strategy around early childhood care and education through building our data capacity, enabling, and strengthening our use of data for decision making and policy, and addressing gaps in our data enterprises. She also provides strategic leadership focused on the coordination of the many data and technology systems in Virginia’s ever evolving birth-to-five space.
Tierah is a two-time graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, earning both a B.S. in Sociology and the Master of Public Health degree from the university. Her career has focused on using data and data systems to drive decision making and making data accessible to all in support of advocacy and opportunity.
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