How does an engineering student shift their career ambitions from big pharma to global health challenges?

In this episode of the global health podcast, we learn from Lizzy Loughnane, an engineer who transitioned to humanitarian engineering after joining Villanova University's service learning program. Lizzy shares her journey working on water sanitation hygiene (WASH) projects in Nicaragua and Madagascar, emphasizing the impact of community service projects on clean water access and public health.

Through partnerships with Aqua water services and various NGOs, Lizzy discusses the importance of cultural awareness, sustainable water solutions, and community outreach programs in engineering. The episode also features insights from Krista Seng, Aqua's Corporate Giving and Community Affairs Lead, about the essential role of water resource management and the broader implications of engineering for social impact and international development.

Check out the shownotes for resources and more!

Villanova VESL Program

AQUA: aquawater.com

-----

Support the Podcast: Click here to send in a one-time or monthly donation

Submit a Question: Click here to send in a question!

Join the Podcast Mailing list: https://www.globalhealthpursuit.com/mailing-list

Make sure to follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook!

Email me at hetal@globalhealthpursuit.com

I think it really just goes back to Worldview and how we can be better citizens of the world.

We need to go across those borders.

We need to see lifestyles that are different than our own and really challenge that kind of status quo, because I think we're very comfortable.

And the more you step outside of that comfort zone and experience those alternative ways of living, it really just makes you a better person holistically, if you can understand the struggles that others go through that maybe don't have the same privileges we do in the States.

Welcome to another episode of the Global Health Pursuit podcast.

The podcast where we explore the world's most pressing health challenges through a beginner's lens.

My name is Hethel Bamman.

I'm a biomedical engineer turned social impact podcaster, and I'm your host.

You just heard from Lizzie Lochnan, an engineer with a passion for bringing safe and sustainable drinking water to those in need.

Currently, she works with Aqua, a water utilities company based in Pennsylvania.

When Lizzie began her first year of college as a freshman at Villanova University, Lizzie had a vision.

And this vision was to chemical engineer and study big medicine.

Big medicine as in curing cancer?

Big medicine as in big pharma.

When I started at Villanova, I had this vision.

I was like, I'm gonna go be a chemical engineer.

I'm gonna study pharmaceuticals, and I'm gonna go into, like, cancer kind of stuff, because I was really into medicine and that kind of portfolio.

Not even health, just like, I want to go into big medicine.

But all of this changed when she took her first trip abroad with Villanova's engineering service learning program, a program called Vessel.

I took my first trip with the Villanova service learning program through the engineering school, and that completely 180'd me in terms of what I wanted to focus on.

So I stayed within chemical engineering.

So I didn't change my major.

But I went from being like, I want to be in medicine and big pharma to I need to be more humanitarian focused and focus on water, sanitation, hygiene, the Wash portfolio of kind of work that spark lit in me and never died.

You might be wondering, going from big pharma and medicine to humanitarian work in water, sanitation and hygiene is quite starkly different.

But for Lizzie, the desire to work in wash was a reminder of her love for service.

She says that as she grew up, she was always service minded, but in those cases, it was always in the Realm of church and youth groups that go on missions, a term that has much more of a religious context to it.

But when she got to college, she realized that there were humanitarian organizations out there that were more technical, more engineering focused, which felt exciting to her.

So I was like, well, let me try that.

Because it's, it's my background of things I enjoy with service and giving back, but it's more technically focused, which is what I kind of wanted to go into.

And so because this opportunity was there, I was like, I gotta, I gotta jump on it.

And I think it opened up this whole new world of what kind of humanitarian organizations or, you know, world groups exist.

Like a bunch of NGOs I never even knew exist.

Like, I always thought it was a very religiously driven kind of work.

This kind of showed that it's not just that, like, you can go and be an engineer and just go integrate yourself and make meaningful impact in people's lives.

Learn more, you know, become a better person yourself in a broader sense that I even knew existed.

Now, if you're listening and you're a young college student, you might be wondering how it might feel to get off a plane in a unknown, unfamiliar land.

And like Lizzie, you might be asking yourself, what am I getting myself into?

So going into the experience, we got on the plane, really not understanding what we were going to be doing.

They kind of were like, you're meeting with a Villanova graduate student out there.

He'll take you through everything.

He has your, your project all situated, so you're just gonna get out there to him.

They'll pick you up, they'll take you to him.

So we fly to Nicaragua, we get out at the airport, there's, you know, some guys saying, hey, we're here for the Villanova.

Like, people get in the back of the truck and let's go.

Very much like, what are we getting ourselves into?

So a bunch of us college kids.

And that was actually my first trip, but also the first trip that I experienced with Aqua personnel going on the trip with us.

On this trip, there were two Aqua employees and five students in total.

Once they arrived, they loaded all of their belongings in a truck and began to head out away from the big city, away from the lights, away from the high rise buildings, away from, well, what we see as civilization.

We drove into the country, into the mountains.

We came to this very small village of Waslala.

And that was eye opening to just see how remote and small these communities were.

I always had the idea growing up in Minnesota, like, I knew what a small town in Minnesota looked like.

I was like, oh, it's probably going to be like that.

No, it was a whole new level of poverty and in access that I'd never experienced.

When they arrived, Lizzie was given a whole new appreciation for water, where it comes from and the pathways some people have to go through to get access.

You know, we always just turn on the pipe or turn on the faucet.

It's there.

Use as much as you want, really.

But when you're in this community and they show you the pathway they have to go through to get water and why this pipeline project we were working on to bring water up from the spring source down to the community was so important that they didn't have to do that manually or drink more contaminated water that was maybe closer to the village.

And I think that just lit a spark in me that was like, this is really meaningful and this is going to impact a lot of people's lives.

And this is where I think I can make the biggest impact.

It was that trip that gave her the quote, unquote bug to get even more involved with service learning.

I think it was that trip in Nicaragua of just taking a moment to reflect on where I was and how.

How it made me feel of kind of like that soul searching of like, I want to do something that I'm passionate about because I don't want to be one of those people that works to live.

Like, I want to do something I care about.

I want to make things better.

While in Nicaragua, she took a moment to realize that this was truly the most impact that she's ever made in someone else's life.

To her, she was only scratching the surface, but even having that small a part in it blew her away.

So just three months later, she finds herself in Madagascar.

But this time she's meeting with village presidents to ask questions like, where are you getting your water?

What kind of things are you doing to protect your land?

And where are you doing your washing?

Simple questions, but questions that can be quite challenging for community leaders in low resourced areas.

And as she sat there in this meeting, she witnessed something she just couldn't believe.

As they were talking and I was trying to keep up with the conversation, I see this little boy run down the dirt road, like maybe 30 yards from us, just in the middle of this, like, town square type situation, and he just pulls down his pants, squats down and then goes number two and grabs a Rock off the ground, wipes his butt, and just goes back to playing oh no with a rock.

Yeah.

Oh, my goodness.

And I was just like.

I was.

I think I was in shock.

And I was just, like, looking at the town, the community people we were speaking with, I'm just like, did.

Did anyone else just see what happened?

Yes, you heard that right.

A little boy basically poops out in the open and wipes his butt with a rock.

Lizzie mentions how in this village, there are livestock that basically roam the streets, and the people who live in this village eat the chickens and pigs that simply roam free, speaking of livestock.

And then, not even five minutes later, this pig walks up past the town square area and eats the little boy's droppings and goes on the its merry way.

And again, I.

I think I'm just in shock again, saying, how is no one looking at this and being disgusted?

Because I was.

And just trying to realize like, that was.

That was the base level we were working with.

It was in that moment that Lizzie realized that the food, more specifically the meat that they will be eating as a meal later on that day could be from the same animals that are eating open defecation like that of the little boys.

This is a cycle that is not okay.

And this is why you get these illnesses and diseases.

She understood that there was work to be done in this community to help prevent illnesses that stem from open defecation.

Helping a community like this can feel like walking a tightrope.

How do you have conversations with folks who have lived in these places for their whole lives?

How do you frame your questions with the best of intentions without trying to seem like a know it all?

Lizzie says that she's always approached these conversations from the perspective of a true learner.

I'm not saying I have all the answers or I'm doing it correctly, but is just trying to understand the why.

Not questioning, you know, what's right or wrong, or I do it this way, but saying, okay, why do you conduct your business this way?

Why do you not want to use, you know, a dedicated area?

Is it.

Sometimes we get.

It's a taboo to use that, and those are some culture things to talk through, or, oh, it's just too much work.

And it was like, well, what are the barriers to that?

Because really, the.

The roots of the problems aren't always what I think they start out as.

And trying to kind of dig back the layers kind of help reinforce what the best path forward is.

Instead of again coming in saying, I want you to do it this way, I think it's best to do this way, kind of figure out why they've done it in the past the way they have, and why they're hesitant to want to change the behavior.

This wasn't the only time Lizzie experienced something that she could only categorize as unthinkable.

While in Madagascar, she visited a local community hospital where a woman had just recently given birth.

Picture a hospital.

What do you think of the picture that Lizzie paints?

Couldn't be more different than you and I might be used to.

The image I want to paint for you is that this hospital was four cement walls with maybe two rooms inside.

No window panes.

They're just open holes, bare electricity, maybe a few lights.

This community had water piping, but the water was not running.

It was no longer useful.

So at one point it was, but now there was no running water in there, no clean water to use.

We go into the village, we go do kind of our.

Our scouting, our conversations.

We come back and they're so happy.

There's a bunch of people at the hospital.

They said, oh, yeah, someone just gave birth.

Lizzie arrives at this hospital and finds out that there was no water and no medication for the mother who just gave birth.

I mean, you think of the pain, the childbirth, like they have to endure that, and there's nothing to clean, no infections.

What if there's like any kind of surgery that needs to happen post birth that's gonna be contaminated?

And just all those kind of impacts, I in complete shock of just how has this community been able to thrive for so long with all of this just basic, I should say, the things US Citizens rely on as basic human necessities.

There are a bunch of communities out there that are still living like that, and I don't think we appreciate it being here unless you go out and see it and understand.

Through the vessel program at Villanova.

Lizzie says that these specific experiences gave her a true understanding of what it means to be partners with community leaders in low resource settings like Nicaragua and Madagascar.

Every country has an in country partner that they partner through.

So I think I learned so much more, too, about the community aspect of this and how they create success over time.

There's a lot of people, there's a lot of time, there's a lot of effort, there's a lot of money that go into these types of projects and how they can sustain for so long.

And it's really through partnerships and understanding how important that is.

Because I did not have a full appreciation for that at first.

I thought I'll come in, I'll solve the problem.

Because I'm an engineer, I can just solve a problem and it's over.

But that's not how the world works.

These projects that Lizzie was assigned to were projects that communities were already working on or were a USAID funded project.

There were multi year projects and the role of Villanova engineers were sometimes small.

But what she took from these assignments was that she wasn't supposed to solve them completely, but find a better appreciation for the realities and challenges that these communities have to face on a daily basis.

Looking back, Lizzie says that she thought she knew everything while on these trips.

But in hindsight, she had a lot to learn.

I thought I knew everything.

I thought I was so smart.

And now I look back on them and I'm like, I didn't know anything about water.

Like, I have learned so much working in like a professional space of water that now I just feel like I can be even more impactful than I was before.

Lizzie has been back to Madagascar five times now, and she says that she's now somewhat desensitized to the culture shock when you hop off the plane.

But every time she brings new people and new students on these trips, and she says it's been just a joy to watch their faces throughout the entire experience.

The wonder, the awe, and so many times the discomfort that they feel in these new environments have been equally as rewarding for her.

Just trying to watch their faces throughout the whole experience has just been amazing because you see kind of the, what did I get myself into?

Whether it's taking them to a hotel where you eat like maybe the weirdest food they've ever eaten in their lives and they don't really know what they're getting into, but it's like, just go for it.

Just try it.

Make yourself uncomfortable or even just seeing the accommodation, you know, they, the students here.

You're staying at a hotel.

Well, the hotels in Madagascar are not like Hilton's.

You know, they're, they're going to be different.

They're not going to be as comfortable, they're going to be maybe not as private.

The bathrooms may not work.

I think watching that growth of people who may have never experienced that kind of life or were questioning if they wanted to pursue a lifestyle more like that.

Lizzie currently works as an engineer for Aqua, a publicly traded essential utilities company that provides water and wastewater services across several states in the US they own and operate systems all around the world and she works within a planning, operational and optimization capacity for water systems within these states.

I get to kind of be that person that goes and solves problems.

The operations team comes to me and say, we have this issue.

We need to come up with some kind of solution to make it better.

What do we do?

In a way, it kind of feels like what I was doing on those trips of, hey, we have this problem, let's figure out how to solve it together and come up with creative solutions.

So I get to do that now kind of every day, which is really exciting.

The overall mission at Aqua is to protect and provide Earth's most essential resource, water.

And as a company, part of their work is outreach on source water protection and education for communities to help people understand where their water comes from, why they should care about their water systems, and why we should conserve our water when necessary.

It all just goes back to the like, why is.

Why is water important for us as a community?

And that really goes along with the vessel projects, because it's like we.

We wanted to do that outreach of why is water important to your community?

Why is it good for you to care?

So kind of bridging that gap has been pretty easy.

I also got a chance to speak with a dedicated Aqua leader who deeply cares for giving back to the students of Villanova and settings around the world without access to clean water.

I am Krista Tseng.

I use she her pronouns.

And I lead the corporate giving and community affair.

Aqua.

She says that this alliance between Aqua and Villanova was simply a natural fit.

We have a lot of engineers in our engineering department, GIS department, who come from Villanova.

It's right down the street from our headquarters.

And a lot of water resource engineers come from Villanova.

So it made sense for a water company to have a lot of Villanova alum, and this was just a natural progression.

We have people like Lizzie who had been through the program at Villanova and who came up through the humanitarian engineering side of things.

And it just made sense for Aqua to be a technical support system to the students as they were designing water infrastructure across the globe.

I mean, who better to help them do that than professional water engineers, right?

It's been nine years since this partnership between ACWA and Villanova has been established, and since then, Krista says that there's been a clear cultural shift in the mindset of employees who take part in these service learning initiatives.

With Villanova, you know, it's very easy.

To get lost in the everyday, go to work, tend to the wells that you're the operator for, or, you know, design the piping systems that are going to deliver clean water to people's homes.

It's very easy to take water service for granted and the fact that not everyone has that.

And at our, our company, we have signed an agreement saying access to water and sanitation is a human right.

We believe that.

And this is just one touch point that allows us to remember how important water is for public health and for the quality of life for not just our customers.

But how, how can we have an impact beyond our service area in the US and so I think having a little bit of that global perspective has helped our employees come to work knowing the importance of the mission that they're working toward.

People feel that mission when they come to work.

They are proud to come to work at Aqua because they know that they are doing something important for their community.

And when we partner with Vessel program at Villanova, we're able to stretch that impact broader than just the customers in our service area.

Krista shares that partnering with the Vessel program is a win, win, win.

It helps people around the world by improving their water infrastructure.

It allows Aqua to lend its expertise to community projects and it gives participants the opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills to diverse real world challenges, all while being able to mentor students within these hands on learning opportunities.

When you go on the ground in different countries, you don't have the tools and resources that you might have here in your everyday job.

You might be faced with solving problems that you wouldn't normally solve.

So it's like an extra challenge and training opportunity for our own employees and then just benefit emotionally and mentally for them to be helping to be of use to people and mentoring students.

And then that's the big local benefit is that the students are gaining so much from being hands on learning alongside the experts at Aqua to propel their education and their passion for water resource engineering and global humanitarianism.

So education, mentorship and real infrastructure upgrades for people that need them.

That was Krista Seng, Aqua's corporate giving and community affairs lead.

As we wrap up our conversation with Lizzie, I asked her to share some advice for students with a budding interest in humanitarian engineering.

Her recommendation is to start by exploring your own network.

You might be surprised by the connections and opportunities already within reach Villanova had.

Vessel was perfect.

But you know, I think a lot of universities, colleges, schools, whatever it is, have programs similar in different capacities.

So I think start there, see what's there.

If you're not finding something that works with you, there's your local neighborhoods, townships, municipalities, counties, you name it.

Usually have some sort of outreach of Water for People or Engineers Without Borders, she says.

To explore who in your network is out there doing the work you're interested in.

You just need to reflect on what matters to you.

And the more you think about that and search out that avenue, it's going to come to you.

It's all about networks.

So the more you speak that network into existence, the more you're going to find people and connect with them.

Even just continuing those conversations here, finding people, connecting with people, that's how it's going to grow.

And people in this space are all about that.

So the more you talk about it, the more you can put yourselves out there.

Just have conversations.

They'll come to you.

You'll find them A big thanks to Lizzie Lochnan and Krista Tseng for their time and involvement in creating this podcast episode.

Thank you to Aqua for sponsoring and supporting the production of this episode and their dedication to bringing clean water to those in need.

To learn more about Villanova's service learning program, head to the link in the description and show notes.

And to learn more about Aqua and their programs, head to aquawater.com which will also be linked in the show Notes.

If you resonate with anything that was said in this week's episode, please comment below.

Especially if you're watching or listening on YouTube or Spotify.

If you're listening anywhere else, feel free to email me at hetalbalhealthpursuit.

Any questions, comments or even concerns are totally welcome.

I'll link all the resources mentioned in the show Notes.

This episode was hosted, produced and edited by me, Hatel Bamman.

Big thanks to my coach Anna Xavier of the podcast space for continuing to push me to create a show that is meaningful, educational and entertaining all at the same time.

If you'd like to support the production of this podcast, there are a few ways to do it.

As an independent podcaster, I would love to give you a shout out on the show.

All you have to do is become a patron by donating as little as $3 a month.

Please follow this podcast wherever you're listening, write me a review on Apple Podcast or rate me on Spotify.

I'll see you in the next.