Maria Jolly

Maria Jolly graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelors of Science with Distinction in Earth, Society, and Environmental Sustainability and Minors in Molecular Cellular Biology and Chemistry. She is now studying to receive her MSPH in Environmental Health and Epidemiology. Maria is co-president of Students for Social Justice and is working at the Emory HERCULES research center, looking at how a lifetime of environmental exposures impact health.

Prior to Emory, Maria was an ORISE fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Environmental Health within the Office of Policy and Program Evaluation. Before leaving her fellowship, Maria was asked to give a TED talk at the 2016 CDC TED MED event. In the talk, she discussed her immigration story and passion for the public health issue of dirty-burning cookstoves to illustrate the importance of how identities and experiences can help inform our public health careers. She hopes to focus her future career in Global Environmental Health in resource-poor environments.