My name is Kétlye Gurrola and I'm from Fayetteville, NC. I am a recent graduate of East Carolina University with a major in Public Health. I grew up in a military household with my mother, father, and grandparents being in the Army.
When I first came to ECU, I was a Middle Grades Education major while enrolled in Air Force ROTC with aspirations to become an officer in the military. While transitioning from ROTC, I’ve gained many skills from the program and from my prior major. While I’m still fairly new to the public health field, my ultimate goal for my career is to be someone who can help address the disparities, the inequities in healthcare while also improving the quality of healthcare for all.
My motivation for applying for SAF’s Into the Fields internship really came out when Mrs. Jensen came and spoke about the program in my class. My goal has always been to help people in any way I can. I saw that farmworkers needed help getting their voices heard and I want to be a part of that. I don't think enough people think about how much work it is to harvest the food that they feed their families everyday. My goals are to gain more knowledge on lives of farmworkers, develop more of my skills that I learned in college and make new connections.
Written by Ketlye Gurrola, ITF 2024 intern