2024 Graduation at UW-Madison: The Power of Transformation (Part 2 of 2)
Whitney Tabifor was born in Cameroon Africa and plans to return there to positively impact the land of her birth.
by Jonathan Gramling
As we talk on the phone, I get the sense that Whitney Tabifor, a graduating UW-Madison PEOPLE Scholar, has a wisdom beyond her years that will more than likely serve her well as a psychiatrist someday. She has a calm, confident, matter-of-fact demeanor where it appears nothing would phase her.
Tabifor has literally come a long ways to get to this point. She was born in Douala, Cameroon, a Francophone African country, and when she was eight-years-old, her parents were looking for a new life, although it would mean starting over, at least academically. They moved to Milwaukee.
And Tabifor has come a long ways also in understanding people, who she is and the role she would like to pay in the world.
While Whitney came to UW-Madison to major in biology, she switched to psychology.
“I had more of an interest in human behavior and the human mind and how it governed how we interact with the world based on our experiences and things of the sort,” Tabifor said.
Tabifor switched to the School of Human Ecology to earn a degree in human development and family studies.
“In any career, in any space, we are in dire need of people who understand the way that people work and understand that their humanity is needed in any space no matter how professional or vigorous it may be,” Tabifor said. “I feel that is the backbone or foundation of connection and success as a society. So in my scenario, I am
more focused on psychiatry. Being able to provide assistance with mental struggles and things of the sort through talk therapy, but also understanding that medicine doesn’t have to be the first step. Just going through those problems as much as you can through communicating, understanding and just hearing about those experiences from one another, but also be able to reach that point that if there is a need for a prescription, I could still do that. That’s where I want to take my degree to.”
While Tabifor knows what she wants to do, she is still seeking the right path I order to do it.
“I’m soul-searching, that’s the biggest thing,” Tabifor said. “But more immediately, I will be working for PEOPLE starting in June for about a month before I head over to India to complete my internship with Child, Family Health International. For about three weeks, we will be conducting research. And during the last two weeks, we will do a rotation in India. I will not only gain all of the information, but also experience the culture and soak everything in and be able to have a new level of understanding for people worldwide. I think the best thing that we can do as human beings is to see things from different perspectives and traveling really does that. I am very grateful for this experience.”
It is this openness to experience as a way to transform that has guided Tabifor in her collegiate experiences.
“Something that I wish I knew as a freshman is to be able to remind myself that I am who I am because of what I have experienced,” Tabifor reflected. “I understand that I am experiencing things every day and I am going to continue to experience things for the rest of my life. So I have the opportunity and the ability to change and transform into who I want to be. I just want to remind them that who you are now is not who you have to be for the rest of your life. You have time to learn. You have time to grow. And just remember that essentially who you are now is not definitive. You are a transformative human being.”
And higher education is a portal to the world.
“Being able to engage in the rooms that you are in and see them as portals to the world, there is so much to learn and there is so much information out there,” Tabifor said. “It’s just what you do with that information that takes you places.”
Tabifor would like to go back to Africa to make an impact on the land of her birth.
“My long-term goal would be to become a psychiatrist and be able to take all of the knowledge that I have learned here and anywhere else back to my home country Cameroon,” Tabifor said. “I understand that mental health crises and things like that are often overlooked or deemed as otherworldly or something that has to do with witchcraft because there is this notion that if all basic needs are met, then theoretically you should be a happy person. But there is this lack of understanding and ignorance for lack of a better word about mental health struggles. My goal is to be able to heal as many people as I can encounter in my lifetime.”
And it is this love of humanity that drives Tabifor in everything that she does.
“One thing I would try to tell everyone is to just lead with love and remember humanity at the end of everything,” Tabifor said. “We all yearn for and search for community like I said. But that’s our way of saying that we all desire love at the end of the day. Continue to show love to people regardless of what you get in return because it’s not about what you get in return. It’s about the impact you want to have in the world that you want to help develop.”
Whitney Tabifor is destined to take the Wisconsin Idea to an international level in order to make her mark on the world. She truly is wise beyond her years.
