UW-Madison PEOPLE Scholar Olivia Johnson Is a December Graduate: A Passion for Healing Others
While her heart is in Pennsylvania where she grew up, Olivia Johnson’s mind is at UW-Madison where she identified her life’s passion and learned the skills to get her there.
By Jonathan Gramling
Olivia Johnson, a UW-Madison PEOPLE Program scholar graduating this week, is a very capable person and student. She spent part of her youth in Canonsburg, PA where she was born before moving to Milwaukee with her mother and sister so they could be closer to their father. She attended the Milwaukee School of Languages where she became fluent in Spanish. And she was super-involved in school. She was at the top of her class, class president all four years and involved in a lot of clubs. John son had done her part to be ready for any opportunity that came her way. But it took others to bring that opportunity her way.
“My guidance counselor just came up to me — there wasn’t anything special at all — with this packet and said, ‘Hey I have this summer program that I think you would be interested in,’” Johnson said. “I filled it out and that literally changed my life forever. I could never thank that man enough for literally just handing me a packet and I had no idea of what I was getting into or what the benefits would be long-term. This was at the end of eighth grade.”
Johnson comes from a close-knit family and so while she was willing to give PEOPLE a try, it was ultimately her mother’s decision.
“That was something that I had never done before,” Johnson recalled. “I didn’t think that my mom would let me, honestly, because it was an overnight program for about 3-4 weeks at a time. But I knew she looked into it. It was very legit. We were doing actual school work and ACT prep for most of the time. It was a crazy idea thinking back on it because my mom didn’t even let me go out at all. She let me go to a summer camp for a week. It changed my life forever.”
For three summers, Johnson had focused on law internships and preparing for the ACT admissions tests through PEOPLE. It was an experience that gave her even more confidence as well as the support she needed.
At the end of her senior year of high school. Johnson was weighing offers from UW-Madison and UPENN. It was proving to be a difficult decision, but in the end it was the foundation that she had already laid at UW-Madison that tipped the scales to Madison.
“I was so thankful that I was in the same cohort every summer because you have a mini-family when you come in to UW-Madison, which is so scary because you are in a college town,” Johnson said. “The entire city is full of college students. It can be overwhelming. We have a space, the PEOPLE College Student Center in the Middleton Building. And we also have 20-30 students that I just spent the summer with in SCE, so you know who is coming to UW-Madison. You really bond with those people. And then you get on campus and you’re like, ‘Okay, I have a small community that I can rely on even if I don’t meet people.’”
During her freshman year, Johnson became part of a freshman interest group, which gave her another layer of friendships and support.
A good part of Johnson’s stay at UW-Madison was during the COVID-19 pandemic, which altered her collegiate experience. But it also helped her find what her true passion in life was, helping others.
“When I got to campus, my first year, I was really struggling to find what I wanted to do on campus,” Johnson said. “And then sophomore year came and COVID-19 hit. And I am also super-interested in health care at this time. So I interned at the child development lab, which doubled as a research center in a preschool. So I am working in a preschool and working with kids ages 3-5. I’m doing daily tasks with them. I was also, at this time after COVID-19 hit, wanting to get involved. And so I started working with the COVID Testing Center. I worked there the rest of spring semester as an internship. I basically took the saliva samples and then we switched to nose samples. I would label the vials and stock them. Right now, I work as a phlebotomist in underserved communities. We process plasma for research. Also the convalescent plasma that we get from the center is also used to treat people with COVID, which I thought was really cool.”
And in addition to being a coach for the Madison Starlings that works to give Black and Brown children opportunities in volleyball, Johnson also put in some time at Elizabeth House.
“This is an amazing non-profit,” Johnson said about the residence for pregnant and single moms. “They will do ultrasounds there. They do check-ups. They have a little store underneath their facility where also they can spend the points that they get on clothes, diapers, food, formula and things like that. And they live in the upstairs apartments. There are only about 6-8 rooms and then there is a big community space. Women can go there all the time. But in order to live there, you have to meet certain requirements. Obviously the rooms fill up very quickly. It’s not a long-term option. What they do is set women up with jobs. They set them up with providers and things like that. They are really doing good work over there that I enjoyed being a part of. I do think that it is so rewarding to feel like someone is appreciative of your help and to be in a position to help,” Johnson said. “I think it really did help solidify my path. I didn’t think I was getting that validation from law or the passion and excitement when I am going to do something. It definitely solidified my plans in terms of where I am going”
And working at Elizabeth House and with the Madison Starlings filled a need to give back to the community in the same way that people are helping her achieve her goals and dreams.
“I really, really enjoy helping communities just because of how much people helped me,” Johnson said. “To give back to that community that I came from and to make those memories for new girls, I thought that was such a powerful part of my undergrad experience. I really loved that.”
While Johnson’s academic experiences during the pandemic helped solidify her plans for the health care field, it didn’t make it easy to get there.
“The easy answer to what was the biggest challenge I faced was COVID-19 because that was two years of my college experience,” Johnson said. “I know for a lot of people it was one. That was hard because trying to go into health care, but not being allowed into hospitals unless you are personnel or extremely sick, you couldn’t get any patient care hours for so long, so I got set back tremendously. To even be able to apply to PA school, you need 1,000 patient care hours. Now they are waiving that to where they will accept what you can get because they understand that people aren’t accepting students into hospitals. But at the time, it was very stressful trying to get patient care hours, trying to get in touch with physician assistants and doctors and trying to get letters of recommendation.”
PEOPLE was with Johnson every step of the way.
“I had people who could point me in the direction that I wanted to go in,” Johnson said. “If I had an opportunity or an idea of what I wanted to do, I could email someone from the PEOPLE Program, Goodson or Pao and they send me a list of links of similar options in the community or on campus that I could do. Or if they didn’t know, they knew someone who does know. And that is so powerful to have people on your team like that. I’ve known Goodson for how long now? You get to know these people very well. They become more than just your advisor.”
And even though Johnson felt connected through the PEOPLE Program and other groups, she still found UW-Madison a little intimidating.
“It is really hard to make lasting connections at such a large university,” Johnson observed. “You make good ones and make small close-knit circles. But I feel like it was really hard to meet people to socialize with people outside of your demographic and the PEOPLE Program for example, like the Red Gym and the Middleton Building, I didn’t meet UW-Madison as a whole.”
Johnson was headed to the health care field. While she maintained her interest in the law by earning a certificate in criminal justice, she earned her degree in human development and family studies. And she has eye on becoming a physician’s assistant.
“I am hoping to go to physician assistant school and hopefully I will be able to get into the dual program where I can earn my Ph.D. and my physician assistant master’s at the same time,” Johnson said. “It just adds one year on, so it would be a three-year master’s program. Essentially I am trying to get my Ph.D. because I really am interested in some of the research that I did with another doctor here on campus when I was a McNair Scholar, looking into the Black infant mortality gap. I’m really interested to continue that research when I become a PA.”
Johnson will be pursuing her master’s and Ph.D. in physician’s assistant at UW-Madison with its excellent program and facilities including UW Hospital. But Johnson is keeping her options open and could get lured away.
“My number one choice, if I do get in, is the University of Hawaii,” Johnson said. “I think two years in Hawaii to study medicine would be just an unmatched adventure. It would be paradise to spend two years studying in Hawaii. I couldn’t imagine anything more beneficial in your 20s to do.”
The world — and the field of medicine — has opened up to Olivia Johnson at UW-Madison. And it was the PEOPLE Program that helped her on her way.