UW Major: History
Senior Officer of Health Service Delivery and Operations, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
Adelaide Davis’s path to becoming a Badger dates back a little earlier than most. In fact, it all started when her grandfather immigrated from Adelaide, Australia, to attend the UW after a chance meeting with a professor who inspired him. Davis’s parents also went to the UW, where they met in Science Hall. Even though Davis grew up in Massachusetts, there was never any question she, too, would make the generational migration back to Madison for college.
Yet once on campus, Davis quickly blazed a trail very different from her family. “I was always interested in the world and different cultures,” she says, and during a course on HIV/AIDS in the African studies department, something clicked. “That was the moment I realized I wanted to work in health.” That moment, along with a university-sponsored study-abroad program in Cape Town, South Africa, cemented Davis’s particular interest in working on the social determinants of health in Africa.
At the same time, Davis was also active on the Wisconsin Sailing Team, which was nationally ranked at the time. “Sailing as a sport has taught me so much,” she says. “You have to be able to adapt and stay in the moment, be very flexible, and be very analytical. You can’t change the wind, but you can always adjust the sails.”
Those skills came in handy when Davis worked in various roles at the U.S. Department of State and the World Health Organization. She joined the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in 2019 and, shortly after, Médecins San Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF). During the COVID-19 pandemic, Davis deployed first to Chad and later to the Democratic Republic of the Congo before security conditions deteriorated to the point where MSF was forced to pull out.
Witnessing the community-wide impact of the MSF evacuation had a profound effect on Davis. She saw a significant need to strengthen community health systems in order to be sustainable without being reliant on international aid. “I want to build local capacity and empower communities to improve their health themselves,” she says.
Davis returned to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and settled in Geneva, Switzerland, where she’s now a senior officer of health-service delivery and operations with IFRC. She leads country-level efforts to grow and support networks of community health volunteers. “At the international level, we’re there to support however we’re needed, but it’s really about growing local grassroots capacity,” she says. Davis credits her time at the UW and her nontraditional background in the humanities for giving her a helpful perspective in the field of international health.
“I took the road less taken, and it’s not easy, but it’s worked out,” she says. “I definitely want to encourage people that are like me, that come from the humanities and are interested in culture, anthropology, history — there’s an avenue for you in the health world.”
