Veronica Sek

The first few weeks at a job are challenging—you’re adjusting to a new role, new coworkers, and a new company culture. On top of that, Malcolm X College Senior Director of Health Sciences Veronica Sek’s first day fell on the day the State of Illinois enacted a stay-at-home order due to COVID-19. She had no idea at that time that she would end up spending her first few years at Malcolm X developing plans to keep people around the world safe during a pandemic.

Veronica grew up on the Southwest Side of the city in Garfield Ridge. She attended Chicago Public Schools and later worked for CPS in its Early College Department. There, she developed connections at Malcolm X through the college’s partnership with CPS on a Community Health Worker program. When a position at Malcolm X opened up, it made sense for Veronica to apply.

“I have so much love for education,” she said. “It’s such a key in the public health space.”

Public health was a passion Veronica developed in college. She was originally studying arts and architecture at the University of Illinois Chicago, but she wanted to explore healthcare. As a Polish American and first-generation college student, she was just taking courses and trying to figure everything out along the way. An internship at Lurie Children’s Hospital in the outpatient oncology center led Veronica to the public health field.

“That’s when I realized I didn’t want to be responding to people who were already sick—I wanted to try to prevent them from getting sick in the first place,” she said. “I learned about public health and its focus on disease prevention, and I decided to switch paths.”

Veronica played a vital role during the early days of the pandemic for the entire city of Chicago. She partnered with the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership and 30 other organizations across the city to train more than 600 contact tracers. Those contact tracers tracked positive COVID cases and communicated with others that the positive individual had been in contact with. Now, the same contact tracers have turned into community health response workers.

Veronica also rolled out the Vaccine Ambassador Course, a self-paced, self-led online course, which was the first of its kind at Malcolm X. The Pharmacy Technician and Community Health Worker staff at Malcolm X created the curriculum to teach anyone who wanted to take it, from elementary school students to senior citizens. About 5,500 people around the world completed the course, enabling them to educate others about the COVID-19 vaccines and navigate difficult conversations surrounding them.

Veronica also helped train Chicago Park District employees to become social distancing ambassadors. They learned about the importance of social distancing, how to contact trace, and they became vaccine ambassadors.

Finally, Veronica has helped grow the Community Health Worker program through community partnerships. During her time at Malcolm X, the program has received ten different grants and service contracts, many of which are multiyear, multimillion-dollar awards, that will help benefit the college, students, and the community.

Still, Veronica says the most rewarding part of her job is seeing her students thrive. Recently, at a statewide Community Health Worker summit, she saw some of her former students who are now passionate employees working at different agencies across the state.

“Our students are doing amazing work in the Chicagoland area and throughout Illinois fighting social injustice, working toward health equity, and filling the gaps,” she said. “The most gratifying piece of what I do is seeing them doing the work in the world and being recognized for it.”