Career Contrast
Career-focused informational interviews from the perspective of a talent expert.
Career Contrast
Conner House - Global Health Sr. Project Manager
This interview is with Conner House, Sr. Project Manager at PATH, a global health and technology non-profit. We discuss how he got his first job at Path, the career path of a Project Manager, what exactly a Project Manager does, as well as the impact of recent news in Global Health.
Learn more about PATH at PATH.org.
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This is Career Contrast and I'm your host, Michael Lane Smith. Each week, I'm hosting a new guest to interview them about their career. Joining me today is Connor House. Welcome, Connor, Glad to be here. What did you want to be when you grew up?
Conner House:I don't know that growing up I had like one specific idea, like I didn't want to be like a firefighter or like a pilot or something. I was pretty influenced by my mom. She's been in healthcare my whole life and for a while, like the career day in high school I did, I shouted like a physical therapist that that was pretty cool. But I've always been really interested in like international events, international happenings. So especially during college I started gravitating towards that. But I don't know that I like knew exactly what I wanted to do. I just thought the world was pretty cool and I wanted to, to, you know, be out in it.
Michael Lane Smith:So, yeah, what did you study? Maybe international relations, is that right?
Conner House:Yeah, so I have like a dual BA from Gonzaga University in good old Spokane, washington. I have a BA in international studies and a BA in political science. I was also in this like it's called the comprehensive leadership program at Gonzaga, so it gave me a little more space with credits like it. I think I could take up to like 21 credits a semester or something. So I also edited a minor in economics in there which was really interesting and kind of shaped where I wanted to to go as well. So, yeah, it was like a dual BA program I took.
Conner House:I like bypassed like half the international, not half. Like a third or a quarter of the international studies degree was like a foreign language and I took like IB Spanish in high school and somehow I did pretty well on the IB exam. So I got placed in Spanish 301. So I like bypassed a bunch of like four classes pretty much, so that kind of opened up my possibilities. But I was so bad at Spanish. I'd have such a better, like such a higher GPA if it weren't for it. Have you used? No, I haven't used it. No like if I travel like I went to Puerto Vallarta and I could like get around I can sort of read spanish but.
Conner House:I can't speak it. Yeah, cerveza like corona, those kinds of things right on, yeah.
Michael Lane Smith:So the obvious question what do you do for work now?
Conner House:yeah, so I'm a senior project manager at an organization called path. Um, path doesn't stand for anything, but the acronym used to be the Program for Appropriate Technology and Health back in the 70s, 80s, when it started. But it's no longer an acronym because we do more than just technology. But yeah, senior Project Manager, path is headquartered in Seattle, where I'm from and where I started my career there. But now I'm in Washington DC where we have, like our bigger policy office and we also have, I think, 16 country offices or programs around the world. So, yeah, all over the place, mainly in Africa, southeast Asia, but we do have an office in like Ukraine and then Geneva, as well as a big office Switzerland, for all the IGOs, things like that. So we're kind of all over the place.
Michael Lane Smith:That's really cool. That's really cool. So I understand kind of similar to I don't know if anyone here has seen the movie the Kid, where Bruce Willis plays an image consultant. He's asked like what does that do? And he's like I consult, so like I get project management. You're a project manager, you manage projects. What exactly is that Like? What do you do day to day? What kind of problems are you facing when you sit down at your desk and do you have a desk? Yeah, what is that?
Conner House:That's a good question. I do manage projects in a senior way, which is exciting. But you know a lot of my work. Um, I guess, taking a step back, um, path is made up of a bunch of different programs and in those programs are a bunch of different projects. Um, and those projects come from a lot of different funders. You know we have like dozens of different funders coming into path.
Conner House:Um, my team is called the market dynamics program Program and we look at market-based solutions to international health problems. So I think of it as how do you break the cycle, break the wheel, how do you grow markets so you don't need organizations like PATH providing aid and technical support and things like that. So my team has a few different donors, you know, a few different funders coming in, and a lot of our work revolves around scaling access to medical devices and also a lot of like medical oxygen. So people think like, oh, like the air, the air you breathe, like you're giving them oxygen. It's like, yeah, like more, like refined medical oxygen for treatment of respiratory care conditions. You know that and that really kind of exploded after the COVID-19 pandemic, because oxygen is key for for treating COVID and a variety of other respiratory diseases.
Michael Lane Smith:But before you dive too deep is access to oxygen. Medical specific oxygen is that? Is that pretty rare in some corners of the world?
Conner House:Yeah, I mean, if you go to like the dentist or the doctor in the US, like you're going to see oxygen outlets in the wall, and that's not the case for many low resource settings or low and middle income countries. It's actually pretty rare. Shortages are common. There's not a very strong market for it. So where markets do exist, you know it's kind of bespoke and there's like a central, you know maybe a facility, filling cylinders and sending it off to healthcare centers all over the place. So it's a bit inefficient. There's a lot of maintenance issues because oxygen producing technologies are challenging and can be dangerous. Right, like oxygen can be extremely dangerous. So there's highly flammable flammable it can explode. You know you can't. Cylinders are heavy. You wheel them around hospitals, they could fall, they could hurt people. So yeah, it's, it's. It's really challenging to find reliable and consistent oxygen in lower resource settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
Michael Lane Smith:Oh, wow, right on. Yeah, so you were talking about your specific program focused on medical oxygen.
Conner House:Yeah, so I mean, I've been involved with this for a while and a lot of this, a lot of my role, has not changed much in the last few years, because we've had the same project for four years now and I guess a big part of my role is early on in that project is working with everybody to build really comprehensive work plans that get us towards our the outputs that we told our funder that we would um pursue in this case, the gates foundation and elmo philanthropies. So you know, in our proposal process we outlined a bunch of different outcomes, a bunch of different activities and outputs and it's like okay, now my job is to work the team backwards from these deliverables to how we're going to do this, how we're going to staff it, how we're going to break up the budget. So a lot of my work revolves around tracking those work plans, making sure that we're, you know, moving towards, you know, delivery of these deliverables. I feel like I'm like doing project manager speak right now, but yeah, and deliverable. What I really like about it is, you know, I get our project touches 10 different countries around the world Senegal, burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, zambia, malawi, tanzania, kenya, india and we're in four states in India, and each of the states is like the size of a country Vietnam and Indonesia.
Conner House:So I got to you know, as I'm making sure that these work plans are being followed, that we're moving forward these concrete outputs and deliverables. I got to make sure that the staff and all those different countries have what they need to succeed. So I got to meet with them every week, every other week, and check in with them, see how things are going, see what they need, you know. Make sure that they have the resources that they need and you know all that to deliver, making sure that I'm connecting them with the technical support that we have in the US and Europe, you know, for if they're doing like a supply chain analysis of, you know where cylinders are coming from and why, they're doing a supply chain analysis of where cylinders are coming from and why they're not getting to a certain place, connecting them with a supply chain expert on our team.
Conner House:I also do a lot to make sure that we have knowledge management systems in place for our global team, because we have like 40 people spread across 13 countries around the world. Are we all sharing information? Where are we putting this information? Um, what routine and regular touch points do we have? Um, yeah, so I get to do a lot of team building, get to do a lot of making sure, uh, people are moving forward things. So, um, it's pretty cool. I, I love being able to um, yeah, to just work across boundaries and, you know, take morning calls with colleagues in Zambia and evening calls with colleagues in Vietnam. It's pretty cool.
Michael Lane Smith:That's awesome. That's awesome. Thinking about the scale and impact of that type of work is a little mind boggling. Um, so we'll dive into that a little bit later, but you know you got into this role. I'm assuming it's like an entry level project manager. Is that right Actually?
Conner House:I was more admin um coming into the role.
Michael Lane Smith:Tell me about that yeah.
Conner House:So I, you know, after college I kind of bounced around, I worked um at the Washington state Senate as a clerk and then I thought law school was maybe in my future. So I worked at a law firm and I didn't really enjoy that experience. And you know, I entered the law firm as an executive legal assistant. So I was already sort of on the admin side and I knew I sort of wanted to end up at one of Seattle's big philanthropic organizations. So I knew of PATH, the Gates Foundation and then some other smaller ones, but started really applying about a year and a half into the law firm and after I had some experience, you know, I got some hits and actually joined the market dynamics team, the same team that I'm on as a program assistant, so like literally the bottom of the totem pole at Path, like the lowest paid worker, you know, just kind of like the grunt job which you know you need. And I was fresh out of college and ready to do that. So I got really lucky with my growth at Path.
Conner House:I'm not sure everybody has the same opportunities that I sort of had like career progression and they're like well, how are you a senior project manager? How did that happen? And and it's it's you know I worked hard but it's also um part of its luck. Like the team that I, the market and the market and the team that I joined was 13 people and we grew to 60 people and along with that had a lot of just career jumps for me. So I moved to a senior program assistant pretty quick because I mastered that job and it's kind of cool a path when you do hit. You know, as you start working up, you can look to more technical roles, so associate level roles where you're doing a lot of the analysis, like you own different work streams and activities, or more project management focused roles, which I wanted to take. I wanted to sort of like have like a meta view of the whole project and not just dive into one work stream. So I became a project specialist.
Conner House:And then you know I was a project specialist and COVID happened and COVID was really really rough professionally for a lot of people, whether being forced to work at home, being laid off. It was tough. And you know I was in the right industry for COVID, like we got a ton of money to combat these global health problems, right, because you think it was bad in the US, like it was very bad in Africa, in a place where they don't have vaccines. You know they were a year behind us on getting vaccines. They don't have oxygen to treat people and to triage people. So the Gates Foundation gave us quite a lot of money to work with the Clinton Foundation to respond to that. And just, you know, along with that we had a pretty small team and we had this massive project come in. So I was able to jump up pretty quick to a project manager to start, you know, supporting the team to get this done and and you know, in the last couple years I've moved on to senior project manager.
Conner House:So had it not been for, you know, as rough as it sounds like the pandemic, like I don't know that I would have leveled up to this point if we didn't have that funding come in. So it is lucky. It's like if you're on the right team and you you have funding come in, you do have those opportunities to grow. But I've seen a lot of people just hit the ceiling, a path, and you know they can't find funding or they, you know, the grants end. You know that's a big part of my world is that like grants come in and you're flush for four years and the grant ends and it's like there goes your coverage, like find more coverage or follow on funding, or you're out of a job, so okay.
Michael Lane Smith:So it seems like it's kind of up to the teams to secure their own funding for their overall programs and projects. Is that right?
Conner House:Yeah, definitely, teams do a lot of their own business development Path, as an institution has a lot of shared services, like a business development team, our lawyers, our grants and contracting team. Those people pull from like a central overhead fund. So every, every time we get a grant, you know, I think it's like 13% of that goes to the overhead pool where our executives and those those departments that I already mentioned pulled from. But then the rest of it, you know, the bulk of the money goes to the actual project team to get stuff done. So, yeah, so a lot of times there's like natural follow on funding or you can find other proposals, but not all the time. You know, I've seen it happen a few times where teams you know their project ends there's no costed or uncosted extension and they have to scramble to find other coverage or, you know, or go down to 60% or, yeah, leave path, which is always sad, wow.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, and when you said go down to 60%, do you guys have like part-time workers?
Conner House:Yes, I think 60% is like the lowest you can go while keeping benefits as like a FTE, a full-time employee. We have consultants and stuff. So there's like ways for PATH employees to roll out of PATH and then come back and consult. But you know you're not like a formal employee anymore and you lose a lot of that coverage.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, and so program assistant to senior program assistant to project manager to senior project manager is that the typical path that one would take to a project manager at PATH?
Conner House:What is the best way to get a job. There's also opportunities, you know, like that just get posted like job ops that external people can apply for or internal people. You know, if you're a senior program assistant in a PM, position opens on another team like you can work your way over there. Yeah, I will also say project managers I think at Path specifically, are a bit of a newer thing in the last few years, are a bit of a newer thing in the last few years. I think teams are starting to see the benefit of them. But when I became a project manager there were only a few at the organization and now there's more and more.
Conner House:Path is a little bit wonky, where we have PADMs. They're called project administrators and those are sort of the financial managers of the project and then you have like the admin team. But there's a lot of room for a project manager to come in and help with the, the financial side while managing the work plans and the day-to-day work, you know. So there's a padm on our team who has the keys to the budget.
Michael Lane Smith:So we share a lot of those responsibilities, both external and internally. But I'm the one like I'm assuming there's a lot of opportunity for folks to move laterally or diagonally within the organization. How often do you guys prioritize external talent or internal talent?
Conner House:Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know like the percentage or the ratio. I do know that if you apply at a job internally at Path, that you're qualified for.
Michael Lane Smith:I think it's had just started to kind of roll out. My office had at least a PM office, a PMO as we called it, so I'm seeing that a lot across the business. I'm at, currently too, increased value for PM. So just for our listeners, whether it's at Path or elsewhere, I think there's a lot of opportunity for folks like this and a lot of great work you could do. What would you say if you were to stay on the PM track, like after a senior project manager? What other titles would you go into? Wow?
Conner House:Yeah, it's a good question and definitely something I've been thinking about.
Michael Lane Smith:You're 31? You look like 25, dog.
Conner House:You're a path for me and I'm like 31. So naturally you're sort of like what's next? Yeah, I know, thank you, I appreciate it. I wish I was 25. No, 30s are great, you have money and you can go do things now. But yeah, the next step in my career is obviously front of mind, sort of. The next step for me would be a program officer, where you would be managing your own projects and things like that. So you would be assigning work to the PADM, the PA, the associates, and you're like fully accountable for those projects. So a lot of the times at PATH those require master's degrees, which I don't have, something I've considered, but just financially haven't. There's been like no incentive for me to get a master's, as I've sort of grown and grown at PATH.
Michael Lane Smith:There are. Would that be like a master's in public policy or master?
Conner House:yeah, public policy, public health, a lot of people have um mph as a path, a lot of people from udub uh, the mph program and the evans school there, um yeah, mph, mpp, um, mpa, um an mba is also pretty common because, you know, especially on my team, that looks at like improving healthcare markets. It's like having somebody with business expertise is is pretty important. But I do think there are ways for people who've been at Path for a while, who have a lot of experience that could, you know, offset a master's degree to grow up into that role. But kind of, yeah, that's TBD.
Michael Lane Smith:Okay, right on, very, very interesting. So you mentioned a lot of travel that you've been able to do at PATH. Is that typical? What types of places have you gone to and for what reasons have they sent you there?
Conner House:Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the fun parts of working in a global organization like this and global health and development is you do have some opportunities to travel. So, um, and I've had, you know, a fair share of path, taking into consideration like a year and a half two year, like halt of all travel during covid, yeah, um, but yeah, I've um, I can run through the list. I mean I've been in nairobi like three or four times. Um, that's A lot of that has been like working with stakeholders there. Kenya has like a devolved healthcare system. So, rather than being at the national level in Nairobi, they have county health management teams, chmts.
Conner House:So, early on a path I think in 2019, I was supporting some data collection. We were looking at electricity quality and how that electricity quality affects medical devices and we got these really cool like plugs that you plug into an outlet and it like monitors electricity quality. You know, surges, sags, outages, things like that um for like two weeks and then we'd rotate them. This is when I was sort of like between a pm and a pa and trying to just like get as much work as I could under my belt. So, yeah, I got to go to like out into the field. You know we call it I think we try to avoid using that term but you know out into the counties and health facilities and we would meet with the health facility lead. You know we would meet with the county health management teams and then plug the device in the wall and, you know, rotate those around.
Conner House:So I was in Kenya for like two weeks. I went back to Nairobi. We had like a big project kickoff, which is kind of unusual. We had some extra funding at the beginning of the project that I'm currently staffed on. So I was in 2021 or 2022. And I got to sort of like help coordinate this giant project kickoff with a lot of colleagues that I've never met before, right.
Michael Lane Smith:But I've worked with virtually.
Conner House:Yeah, I worked with virtually for years and years. And that's another downside of working in this like global organization is I talk to people who I may not, may never meet, because they're, you know, in a country that I may never visit and they may not have an opportunity to come to the U? S or Europe. So it was really cool to meet everybody and went back again for some staff building activities early last year. But, yeah, along with that I've been to Dar es Salaam, tanzania, dodoma, which is the capital of Tanzania. We also were doing some work in Senegal, which I mentioned earlier, and I've been to Dakar, senegal, in Senegal, which I mentioned earlier, and I've been to Dakar, senegal, yeah.
Conner House:And then last late last year, we had sort of a routine internal audit of our project. You know, path is they're like always auditing to make sure we're adhering to, you know, all of our policies and things. And they took a look at our Vietnam project undersource, the main project that I staffed. So I got to go to Hanoi last year, which was really fun, and meet the team there and see them, yeah. And then occasionally there's some conference opportunities. We had a conference in Dubai that I helped actually build and that was like right when I started at Path.
Conner House:I think after like two months of being at Path, I went to Dubai. So that was a pretty cool way to like enter the organization and I think it set my expectations pretty high for travel. I could be gone like every other month if I could, like I really enjoy it, but that's just not always the case and I think it you know, it brings into question, especially post-COVIDcovid like and this is something that I think I struggle with like a problem that we faced um, a challenge is it's like is it a good look to be sending white people to africa on these trips? Right, like, could we do this virtually and save money? And like, reinvest that money into the project that you would have spent on airline tickets and hotels and stuff? Yeah, um, is this an opportunity to empower somebody from the country teams to do this on their own or meet the stakeholders by themselves and not need the white dude showing up to help? And I think they're very valid and it's made me do a lot of introspective thinking about how to go about this and I think there's a fine balance.
Conner House:I think there's also a lot of value in working face to face and in the same room. Um, I think everybody craves that. I think humans sort of crave that, no matter if you're living in the democratic Republic of the Congo or Geneva, like you want to be in person and having these conversations in person. So, um, I think it's about finding's, about finding balance with that. So it's not like people are traveling, I think, as much as they used to a path abroad. I think they're sort of weighing, you know, putting more weight behind their decisions to travel.
Conner House:So yeah, I do feel really blessed for my opportunities and hope for more. But yeah, I think a lot of thought goes into these decisions.
Michael Lane Smith:Absolutely, absolutely. And I wanted to talk about something which you brought up, which is the reception of PATH and the work that you guys do. And so, if I'm thinking about it correctly, you guys identify a need in X country and the example you gave was oxygen, but you also talked about COVID and so in the oxygen example, you discover that there's a shortage of medically available oxygen. You know, in X location. You guys, you know, create a work back for however many years that's going to take or months, find, you know, funding, you get the funding, you buy the oxygen, you send it off. You try to find, maybe even like a sustainable recurring source. Perhaps you know of solutions, so not just like a one time fix, but I'm assuming, kind of longer term fixes. Am I thinking about the problems you're solving and how you're solving them correctly? Would you describe it differently?
Conner House:Yeah, I mean, I think it's very accurate, right, like we knew early on that there was oxygen shortages, oxygen issues all the way back in 2016, and working with our donor, the Gates Foundation, to fund those interventions. And then how do we keep that rolling for this long? It's like one project goes to the door, opens it, and it's like if we get more funding, we can continue to address this and go down this route. So there's been a lot of that. There's also some global bodies that do a lot of the steering of the global health agenda. That is very important and can help direct funding.
Michael Lane Smith:What are those organizations?
Conner House:The WHO, the UN. The Millennium Development Goals are huge from the WHO and you know it's about tackling those giant problems facing humanity. But also path needs to be adaptable. You know donors also have their own agendas and want to see, you know, certain and specific impacts and get a return on their investment and see that that money you know being used as like seed money to grow new projects and you know how do they really really create long term impact so they could turn around to the people who gave them money and say, look, look what we did. You know, and that's very valid, like that's how this whole thing works.
Conner House:Right, we have expertise in pretty much any health area you can think of and we're always evolving. You know, from HIV to wash, like clean water programs. Pat does a lot of like technical innovations. We've done a lot with like innovative vaccine delivery methods. We've supported there was a clinical trial two years ago of a malaria vaccine which is just so exciting. You know can you vaccinate against one of the largest killers of humans out there malaria and one of the biggest killers of kids too. So things like that and we're we're also evolving, like we're looking now at like the intersection between climate change and health, and you know how do we, how do we go about that and solve those problems that are inevitable. You know like we're going to see mosquitoes going out of you know they're the current places where you think of having a malaria burden will grow because the climate is changing, it's getting warmer. Mosquitoes can go to new, new and exciting places and infect people who don't have maybe the immunity. Go to new and exciting places and infect people who don't have maybe the immunity.
Michael Lane Smith:Exciting for them, yeah, so you know, obviously these are crucial problems, you know. I think, if you were to think about the building of the Panama Canal and how many people died from malaria, like it's very obvious. You know these are issues that exist and you know when you are approaching a country or a nation or a county, how is that received, how do those conversations, you know, even start?
Conner House:Yeah, it's a great question. I think central to this whole point that I'm trying to articulate, like we've done a lot of work in like how do we decolonialize global health? Like why is it us making decisions about what we're funding? We should put that burden on countries to do. And I think something else great about PATH is, like we have about I think, 1,600 employees and only I think 300 or 400 are in the US and Europe. Like the rest are all in our country offices and in those country offices they're all nationals of the country that they represent and in those country offices they're all nationals of the country that they represent. So it's really on the country teams to. You know they forge these relationships with ministry of health officials, you know, at the national and state level, and so it's a lot of the work is done there and conversations that they have in rooms like what are your priorities? You know how can PATH support you in your priorities? And that's huge. And I think that's the other side of things. So I mentioned when you're like building out project work plans at the beginning.
Conner House:A lot of it revolves around talking to country teams to talk to stakeholders, partners, like I said, the ministry, the government officials outside of the ministry, like the big decision makers. It's like how can Path help? Here's what we are capable of. How can we cater this to your situation? So you know that looks a lot different.
Conner House:That's why every country doesn't have the same deliverables. None of the 10 countries have the same thing going on, like they're all sort of creating their own interventions and then we're trying to support that. So we've really tried to make it like driven by the country teams, like we have this pot of money, we have these high level goals, we have experience in, you know, shaping markets and, and you know our technical experience in medical devices and medical oxygen. You know how can we use this to to help you and, and you know, take these learnings back and then also go help other countries too. So, um, yeah, so we do really try to drive it at the um, the country level, which can lead to a lot of problems too. Um, what do you mean? Um, you know people ask like, what are problems that you face? And it's like sometimes it's like an election in a country, you know, and x country.
Michael Lane Smith:They have an election.
Conner House:Yeah, I know right like not need. Besides, what's going on in our own country right now? But, um, you can imagine, in countries where we work, you know, if a new president comes in, they have their own agenda, they have their own health agenda. Um, they're going to be appointing their own people to the ministry of health. Those ministry of health people have their own priorities. And now you need to restart this relationship management. You sort of have to reintroduce paths sometimes, and sometimes work is really paused, like we had in Senegal, I think, three years ago there was a presidential election or maybe two years ago, and you know work was really halted, like they were doing basic treatment of patients. They weren't looking to expand work during the whole campaign phase. And then you know, when the new president comes in, that's like a whole transition effort, right, just like I'm sure you know bureaucrats in the US go through like understanding new priorities and how to manage this, yeah, new agenda. Our country teams get to do that, and you know this can happen like in the middle of projects and we already have work going on. So it's like, well, here's what we're already doing. You know how can we tailor this to your current agenda? Um, yeah, and, and how do you quantify impact? We've done a lot with monitoring and evaluation, like, how do we quantify what we're doing? Um, and that's only getting better and better.
Conner House:I mean, I I've heard Bill Gates speak before on, like, malaria detection and you know, back in like the 1990s and early 2000s, when Bill Gates was just beginning his philanthropic adventures in global health, a big thing for him was like, we have no data.
Conner House:Like you know, we had malaria burdened by like. If we had malaria burden by like, if we had the right data at the like level of the entire country, it's like, oh, zambia's malaria burden is x, not like the province, like the provincial level in zambia, but like the entire country. And that's not super helpful when you're looking to to, you know, target malaria inventions, interventions to reduce malaria. So now we're at a point he's done a lot of, he's invested a lot in the ihme, the international health metrics institute yeah, I think I got that right, but that's based out of udub and they do incredible work and like, like, targeting and getting specific data from from the ground. And now you can look at malaria, the malaria burden in zambia by like, a kilometer by kilometer area. It's just insane. So it's like, how do we get better at that? How do we, like, really show the impact and show you know if if numbers are going down or numbers are going up, like if it's working, or if it's not?
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, yeah.
Michael Lane Smith:And I have a friend at the IHME and he he's been working there for a while. Mathematician, shout out, friend of the pod. He's been working there for a while. Mathematician, shout out, friend of the pod. But you know, you spoke to a little bit of data and I'm curious when Path is trying to data collect, when they're looking at a problem, trying to quantify the problem so they can think through quantifying a solution, where do you get your data sources from? Is it government? Is it, you know, universities? Does Path do their own research through funding?
Conner House:Yeah, what does that look like? Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of everything. Path does do its own research. We're in the middle of like a like a big consumption study right now of medical oxygen, so understanding you know how much oxygen are people consuming for various ailments. So that's happening right now in three countries and I'm really involved with that.
Conner House:But a lot of money comes or, excuse me, a lot of data comes from, like DHIS data, existing data that countries have. There's been a lot of work at the global level, funded by the UN, the WHO, to strengthen countries ability to detect and, you know, house and have a repository for this data. So a lot of it's pulling from those systems like DHIS. We've done some work in creating new systems and supporting that.
Conner House:In Tanzania they have the acronym is MEMIS and I'm struggling right now to remember what it stands for, but it's like their own, uh, like indicator system for tracking various diseases and, um, it's really, really cool, like it's a huge priority. Health indicators is a huge priority for countries right now, so they might have these existing systems from, um, big donations that have happened in the past where they're they're kind of creating their new one. But that makes it very challenging sometimes to work in these environments when you are really data blind and where there I can say from personal experience experiences where there are really good data repositories, like DHIS or this MEMES, they're not counting, they're not tracking oxygen, like we come in and we want oxygen data and they're like you want what you know, like like that's not like that's the last one yeah, exactly so it's like.
Conner House:And then we we show them how important this is and they see it firsthand and again we had this like huge, like swing in in people's understanding of the importance of oxygen after covid and a lot of our advocacy and communications efforts, and now everybody wants the data. They want to be tracking it, you know, um, so, yeah, it's continuing to grow, but, yeah, sometimes you can be data blind and that can be really really challenging. Um, yeah, it's like, how do you define and solve problems when you just don't have don't have any data?
Michael Lane Smith:yeah, and you know I'm I'm hearing you talk about the problems you guys are dealing with and, um, you know the goals that you have. Like it would seem simple in concept to say, fund someone to build an oxygen production plant in Zambia, or you know Senegal X country that has the need, hand it over to a local operator, sell it to a local operator and boom, you're done, problem solved. But tell me, tell me why it's not that simple? Because it can't be.
Conner House:No, it's not that simple because it can't be right. No, it's, it's not that simple, um, I mean, first you need to figure out where you know if the you need to work with the ministry first off. You need to, like, talk to the stakeholders to see what their needs are, figure out where the burden is, um or where this auction is lacking. So you need to find a site. You need to make sure that the money is there to get it to the site. If you're talking about Zambia, that's a landlocked country, how do you get the massive PSA plant there? Who are you buying it from? You know there's a few global giants of medical oxygen. How do you work out a contract with them? How do you get it to the site? Who's installing it?
Conner House:And then the biggest thing, like the biggest thing that we're facing, is who's maintaining this system? You know, like, when pieces start to rust, like bolts fall off, who's coming in to fix that? Who's trained to do that? Is it a contractual issue with the manufacturer, like, are they going to bring in people? That's going to take time, that's going to be expensive to fix it. You know now you're talking about this like critical thing, being offline for maintenance problems. So how do you make sure that there's the biomedical engineers in that country are trained to to repair this equipment and keep it running? And that's a huge thing. It's like BME training. Bmes are incredible, like they're the backbone of these health systems running around making sure you know equipment's fixed and ready to go and operating correctly, making sure that the purity of this medical oxygen is at the right level. I think it's got to be like a 96% purity. If it's anything lower than that, it's not doing you any good, or something like that. It's like some percentage.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, I guess we're talking about medical specific solutions, like we have an incredibly regulated medical space here in the States and governments who pay for medical care for all of their citizens have, incredibly, you know, regulated and bureaucratic systems set up for you insurance for you know, maintenance and repair, and so yeah you're essentially like trying to set up an entire industry and system that is sustainable and that is a decades-long effort, potentially yeah, I mean, that's the big thing right now.
Conner House:It's like all the equipment that got like like dumped in these places with all this covid money, is now breaking down and we don't have the money to repair it. I don't have the equipment to repair it, the spare parts to repair it. So it's like all these different issues coming together. So you say like, oh, can I donate a PSA plan? I'm like, well, you're going to be donating this for the next X amount of years, like the life cycle of the product. Like you need to keep your wallet open for when this thing inevitably breaks down. Um, and like, make sure it gets repaired. So it's not simple.
Conner House:You know, I listed like a dozen different inputs to this problem. Right, it's like how do you make sure that countries are, you know, ready to respond to all of them? And it's really challenging. And then you know these it would be challenging in the us, and I'm sure it is challenging in the? U US to keep these things maintained and repaired. And it's even more challenging in lower resource settings, right? So yeah, it's a struggle. And there's no like silver. There's no silver bullet. Right, it's like a whole system level issue.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, what would you say? What change have you seen over your eight years at PATH in the industry?
Conner House:Yeah, I mean, I think a big change I mentioned was sort of the decolonialized movement Like that's really affecting our funding, right, because I think a lot of donors are like why would we give it to PATH, why don't we just give it to people in Africa directly? And I think that's again a very valid question. That's a huge, a huge change. I think, like I said, covid really shined a spotlight on the importance of international health, the vaccines, you know. It exposed an entire generation to a healthcare crisis and you know a lot of the countries that we work in have regular healthcare crisis.
Conner House:Crisis is going on, crises going on, excuse me, ongoing. You're saying ongoing.
Conner House:Yeah, it is on top of all these other problems, yeah yeah, all the time, and you know there's things you're not even hearing about. You hear about ebola, like you're not hearing about the mpox outbreak in the drc right now, or margaret marburg virus in tanzania or just a strained health system, right, um, so these things are often happening. Um, I think a big problem is just um consistent funding. Um, the oxygen work that we've had has been really disrupted by prior to COVID, it would be like a grant for like a year, or grant for two years, or like here's six months worth of funding. Like it's hard to like really create change with that. You're sort of just like continuing to like kick the can a little bit, right, and we've been lucky since COVID to have a lot of funding. But now you know I'm coming at you. Our project ends in May of 2025, our big one, and you know we're faced with.
Conner House:We've made a lot of really big impact through this project source. You know it really built off the COVID project. It was in the same countries and, yeah, we just don't have the funding outlook right now to keep this running. So it's that's a huge problem, right, like we have, we've built up staff in 10 countries that we're going to have to sort of begin winding down, and that's really hard. You know, I think we've heard feedback from like in the DRC. You know we have we're building a training center there. So how do you train biomedical engineers and university students on oxygen administration to patients and to maintenance? And we set that up and it's sort of like well, where's the funding to make this sustainable?
Conner House:And it's like that that may, that may not happen.
Conner House:You know, in Zambia we we support a technical working group on oxygen that was set up during COVID and now it's really influential in the ministry of health in Zambia.
Conner House:It's a place where all the different partners can come together and talk about the work and and sort of divide and conquer in a way. And the Ministry of Health in Zambia is like path needs to keep this going, like this is huge and our team there has had to be like we don't have the money to do that, you know. So it's like it seems like just when we have some big impact around the world, you know, the funding comes to an end Because these things don't happen in the span of, you know, four years. They're very long-term investments and Source our current project which, like I said, is ending, really built off the emergency response out of COVID, and so I think we're at a pivotal time right now when people are sort of like, oh, covid's behind us. You know, medical oxygen isn't a problem anymore. Yeah, so it's too bad. I think just that consistent funding is always a challenge for NGOs like PATH.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, yeah, you spoke earlier to specific NGOs that you partner with or you know PATH gets support from. You know you mentioned the WHO, the UN Obviously not breaking news, but our most recent president has decided to depart the WHO, or at least bring the US out of the WHO. How do you anticipate that'll impact you and your job directly or just PATH in general?
Conner House:Yeah, I mean we do a lot of work with the WHO. Path sits on a lot of technical working groups at the WHO. We have a lot of overlap with them. We do a lot of events with them. We have a lot of overlap with them. We do a lot of events with them. If we have US government money coming through PATH, well, we won't be able to work with them. Luckily, my team has mostly private money from foundations and stuff so we can continue to operate.
Conner House:As far as I know, there could be policy changes on that, so that's like that's sort of what I'm thinking now that I mean Trump did this before. In his last term he pulled this out of the WHO. You know that that grinds our work to a halt and we provide really life saving interventions through that and outside of PATH. You know PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS relief that they things that really create life saving interventions for people to make sure people have prep, to make sure HIV is under control people are getting tested for HIV so it doesn't spread. Malaria control, you know, making sure kids have food and clean water, like these incredible things that the US has done you. You know, with our foreign aid is also less than 1% of our federal budget. You know, it's, in the grand scheme of things, not a lot of money and that 1% makes us the most giving country in the history of the world, right, the number one philanthropic country on earth.
Conner House:Yeah, so I mean, I'm kind of doom and gloom right now because it's really it's really a struggle and I'm seeing a lot of colleagues have to put their work on hold. A lot of people at USAID are being let go. It's a really challenging time and I talked about, like the Senegalese presidential election. You know, I've been through Trump before a path, but this is, this seems new and, like I said, it's just really unprecedented to cut all foreign aid. And I think it's just really unprecedented to cut all foreign aid and I think it's a terrible decision. I think it's, yeah, not in the us's best interest. Um, you know and that's my own opinion, that's not the opinion of path I think path is always looking for for ways to work with, you know, different administrations and that's key to our, our mission. So, yeah, um, yeah, I'm sure it's, I'm sure you'll continue to work with this one to try to do the best we can.
Michael Lane Smith:And I did see there's hope that you know Congress, they pass a lot of the laws that you know ultimately lead to funding for organizations like yours. So, you know, hopefully the Supreme Court case or the case that's now making its way through the course, will, you know, hopefully reverse that and bring some funding back. This next question is a little bit more philosophical in nature and, I think, just related to like why PATH exists and you know why it's important. I remember going to college and I studied international relation.
Michael Lane Smith:Human rights law was my focus and, you know, in the early international relations classes you talk about the formation of government. Like what is government it's? You know, one argument is it is the organization of violence on behalf of a community. That was one of the early arguments, you know, developed, though, to something we call today the welfare state, which is an argument that it is the government's job to fund public health, to care for its populace and provide, I would say, like a minimum standard of living. I think the existence of PATH suggests that. You know, not every state, every government is doing that, and I think you even look at the US and our health care system. What would you say to someone who has concerns about? You know the nature of a company like Path, or just the nature of you know having to rely on billionaires and their donations to fund positive public health outcomes. What do you think about that and what would you say to that?
Conner House:Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a big question, right, and I think there's a lot of different schools of thought. You know, these countries that we operate in they are lower resource settings. You know, they're landlocked. They've had enormous, enormous wealth extracted from them and their populace extracted from them, right, if we look at slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism, yeah, they're like, not in the best position to grow their own economy and provide for their people. And I think that's where organizations like PATH step in and USAID and the US government. Right, I think, from a more American-centric perspective, it's in our best interest to be doing this. It's in our best interest to be providing aid to other countries to help make their population healthier, to monitor disease outbreaks, because if we're talking about health issues, why not have Americans face it in Africa than having it face our population in the US? Right, like we can track and learn from these diseases and make Americans safer. It also strengthens our soft power. People want to work with Americans. They, you know, they want to have relationships with the US if we're doing this in partnership with them. So, yeah, I think, like I said, it's just in our best interest to be doing this. It's not a ton of money in the grand scheme of things, to be doing this Less than one percent of our federal budget and it just has enormous impact. You know, we're saving millions and millions of lives around the world, like it's that simple, by making sure that we're eradicating malaria, that we're making sure that kids have access to clean water, that HIV isn't spreading unchecked. You know, in places where countries just don't have the resources to do this and they rely on the scientific and technical expertise of Western powers, so naturally we need to fill that void. And, yeah, I think it's critical and I think, besides sort of an American patriotic viewpoint or the viewpoint of countries that may just not have the resources or the technical wherewithal to do this, it's a moral question. We do have the resources to make sure that people aren't dying from preventable diseases, communicable and non-communicable, communicable and non-communicable. Should we use those resources to prevent that from happening, to prevent kids from dying or mothers from dying from postpartum hemorrhaging or HIV to spread unchecked?
Conner House:My viewpoint, obviously, is that we should and we do, and I've dedicated my young adult life to doing this right. Probably a salary at an NGO that's less than I could make in the private sector, but I think it's important, and I think it's. It's something that we have to do, that we should feel a burning desire to do. You know, you hear a lot of like pro-life from evangelicals and it's like this is the easiest money to spend if you want to be pro-life right, it's so easy, it's, it's so straightforward is the easiest money to spend if you want to be pro-life right, um, it's so easy, it's, it's so straightforward. Like you're saving lives, um, you're doing the work, you're making the mission happen. Um, and you're, you know, like I mentioned earlier in this discussion about decolonializing like there's different ways of going about it, like there doesn't need to be strings attached. A lot of this can be done in partnership. And how do you empower countries? You know so that maybe we don't need to be spending this money Like that'd be great, to get to a point, but I think it needs to happen over time.
Conner House:I don't think just cutting off all foreign aid is going to help. That's going to create a crisis, not a problem to be. You know, to find a solution, for, like I said, there's a lot of schools of thought, like I did study or I read. Dambisa Moyo is a Zambian woman author. She wrote Dead Aid. Her argument was to just cut all aid immediately and let low income countries, low and middle income countries figure it out.
Conner House:I don't think that's the way to go. I think that's a very damaging way to go. I think innocent people who don't know otherwise would be impacted from a decision like that, and they are being impacted right now with the foreign aid stop. I think there's just there's ways of doing this in partnership and in accompaniment that will have profound impact and eventually we can sort of step away and these countries will have the resources that they need, the technical power, to solve these problems. But for now we're all tied up together and I don't think that's a bad thing. I think our liberation is bound together and, like I said, it also gives the US eyes in these places to be tracking diseases and making sure that what they're facing in these lower resource settings aren't going to come back to haunt us in the US.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, well, I really like the point you made about you know a lot of these countries facing, you know, maybe disproportionate burden of negative health outcomes.
Michael Lane Smith:Like a lot of these countries aren't facing that in a vacuum.
Michael Lane Smith:Like there are reasons why you know there's more poverty in Africa and it has a lot to do with, you know, the actions of several European states in you know, over the course of several centuries Right and even today there's, you know, mineral extraction happening at the expense of communities abroad, not to say many other things.
Michael Lane Smith:But I also was struck by just the nature of collaboration that allows this work to happen. We talked a little bit about the WHO, the value that your company personally gets from working with them, and it's pretty shocking to hear now projects that are working with government, federal money in the US have to just stop and can't continue their work. That's upsetting. But you know, I think we're seeing right now in real time the expansion of the bird flu. Another couple hundred thousand birds in Minnesota were called just to prevent, you know, the growth of another great pandemic, called just to prevent you know, the growth of another great pandemic. You know from your knowledge of working abroad and you know being at PATH what do you think the impact of that could be just here domestically?
Conner House:Yeah, I'm not super optimistic right now with the state of things. I think a big thing is the Trump administration has kind of put a silence on the CDC and the NIH, so we don't have data on these outbreaks at a federal level, which is scary, and that is something that you know we've had continuously for decades and now we don't, and that is something to be worried about. But yeah, I mean it's not a great time. I mentioned, you know, we're in the middle of flu season first off, and flu can be very deadly in the US, the avian flu that is spreading.
Conner House:I think I read that at the beginning of the year there had been three bird to human transmissions and now we're in the 60s. So the disease is evolving in some way to be able to impact humans more. I think only one person has died and they had pre-existing conditions, which is a good sign. But the flu likes to evolve and spread and who knows where we're going to be from like a human health standpoint, other than just a supply chain, agricultural supply chain problem, when we're culling hundreds of thousands of chickens a day. You know we talk about egg prices not going down anytime soon if this continues. But in addition to that, kansas is facing its largest tuberculosis outbreak in history right now. Oh Jesus, something else that didn't spread spread very rapidly.
Conner House:Yeah, oh Jesus, I didn't know that Spread very rapidly. Yeah, and Mpox in the DRC is looking a little bit different than it did in the US. Like I'm a gay man, I was vaccinated against monkeypox when it was surging in the US. That vaccine is the uptake is not as high as it should be to prevent the spread of that in the DRC right now. And I also mentioned Marburg virus and I'm not saying this to like scare people.
Conner House:There's always been these disease outbreaks. Avian flu is always bopping around. The problem is, if you start removing our ability to track the data, to report these things, to track the data, to report these things, as you're cutting domestic and foreign aid, like that's a ripe environment for a disease to take off and to have no more guardrails Like that's that's how this happens. What we had in place, as like a week ago, two weeks ago were guardrails to make sure that if diseases do take off, we know how to combat them, we can mobilize really, really smart people to combat these things, we can isolate them, we can begin understanding the disease so we can vaccinate against it. You know, one of the one of Trump's biggest accomplishments that he's now distanced himself from was Operation Warp Speed to get a COVID vaccine Like that was incredible, and that vaccine saved probably millions of lives Not probably. It saved millions of lives. And to be cutting resources to health agencies, to not be reporting data while we're seeing an uptake in like a variety of different diseases, it's just.
Michael Lane Smith:It doesn't fill me with optimism, right now I read shortly after the announcement of the WHO withdrawal that one of our billionaires I don't know which one offered to pay for the US's now foregone commitment to the WHO, at least this year. I don't remember specifically the commitment he made, but what do you think the chances are we're going to need PATH here in the United States in the next four years. Like, are you guys already operating in the States, you know, is that? Is there private? Yeah, Are you guys going to save us if the government doesn't?
Conner House:I mean we don't. We don't operate in the US. There's been, there's been talk of that. Right now we don't. Our only US offices are to manage grants and things like that and LMICs. But no, I don't think billionaires just throwing money around is the greatest thing, especially when it's a decision that the Trump administration made to cut us off from one of our biggest partners in the global stage, the WHO. Yeah, I don't. I don't think that's the solution. I think what's going to happen is other countries are just going to become more influential, like we're creating a vacuum that will be filled, likely from China or Russia. You know India's. India's grown a lot in the last 10, 20 years. Their economy is growing. Indonesia there's probably China will take over our our you know our contributions and have more and more influence of the WHO.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah, earn more goodwill as we lose out.
Conner House:Earn more goodwill and have just more influence, more power, more soft power and more goodwill um and have just more influence, more power, more soft power and more hard power to steer um who decision making. And you already sort of saw that. You know a big, big reason for this is the who is sort of fumbling the origins of covet 19 because china wasn't cooperating and china flexed its influence in the who early on in COVID-19. So you know, the more influence they get like, the more that will happen in the future. And yeah, it's not good. If you are truly American, first you should want us to strengthen the post World War II order, not run from it.
Michael Lane Smith:Yeah Well, as I'm listening and learning from you about disease and preventative measures, you know the things that have been allowing us to succeed in the fight. You know, one takeaway I'm having is this is a forever task and project, Like we're always going to be fighting disease, Disease like any living thing is just going to continue to evolve. So really like the best outcome or the best preparation to battle these types of issues really is a strong and cooperative set of institutions across the globe. Am I thinking?
Conner House:through that right exactly.
Michael Lane Smith:No, very well said yeah, yeah, um, I want to move on to you know kind of the last segment, just really around disruption, around technical innovation and then of like my final couple of questions, but with you know the development of AI and um, you know other kind of big, exciting new changes that are happening in industry. You know how have disruptions made you guys more effective? You know what's been maybe the most impactful positive things to to throw disruption your way.
Conner House:Yeah, I mean, I think technology has a great ability to bring us closer together. You know, like I said, just even the ability to communicate with other people, especially since covet has gotten really, really seamless. Um, gone are the days of like skype meetings or like grabbing a zoom code like I can call, I can use teams or google meet or something to call colleagues around the world and have a face-to-face with them at any time, you know. So I think in that way we've gotten closer. You know, path is still looking into the AI situation and what that means for health. I know that there's like a working group looking into that right now.
Conner House:I don't know that I fully have an opinion on it, to be honest, like I don't know that I think health is a unique issue to where, like I can't like make somebody healthier Right, like they can, they can learn from AI, like maybe I can help them understand how to live a healthier life.
Conner House:So that's something to consider. But at the end of the day, it's not going to be like I vaccinating somebody or I cleaning a water supply or I am making sure that, like a woman has inhalable oxytocin on hand to not, you know, bleed out from childbirth. You know, like a lot of these things are human issues and humans driving this. And yeah, ai I'm sure can make us more efficient, but it's still. How do you like resource human beings and get them in the room with people? But it's still, how do you like resource human beings and get them in the room with people or advise them in a way to live a healthier life? So I'm sure the very smart people at Path will find ways to really leverage this, and I think they probably already are. That's awesome, yeah.
Michael Lane Smith:Right on. For folks who want to get into your line of work. You know how do they even start. I mean, you obviously took a route through several admin roles outside of the nonprofit NGO space and worked your way in. Through that experience, what would you say to recommend to folks who want to get into?
Conner House:your work? Yeah, I mean that's a great question. I have a lot of folks reach out to me Gonzaga alums or other people in this space. You know, if you're willing to really fight your way up and you have some experience, like starting as a program assistant and admin, is is great. It's a great way to to get your foot in the door and learn what you really want to do at PATH. Um, if you're interested in this and like the longterm um and you have the resources, like pursuing an MPH is a sure way into PATH or like another global health focused organization. Yeah, I think those are a couple of great ways to do it. If you have like international expertise, if you have like expertise in like a specific disease area or like you're like a supply chain analyst, like consultants can always sort of work a path. Um, we have a couple consultants that provide like really important business expertise into our team. So there's a few different ways but I will say it's tricky, like it's really hard.
Conner House:I, right out of college, was applying like mad at path and I didn't have any luck on anything, even like program assistants. Like it really took about two years of me getting working experience before I even got a call back. Even then I had some opportunities fall through and this was a path and the Gates Foundation. So I think just having some experience you know, if you're fresh out of college like you might need to slog through it a little bit you know I had to, like I was having the hardest time finding a job after college and I ended up like reaching out to like my local state senator for help and that's how I got you know other than my interest in politics and local governance. That's how I got on the Ways and Means Committee at the Washington State Senate in Olympia and that's what really gave me foundational, just experience.
Conner House:You know, I think a lot, of, a lot of resumes are probably tossed out just because you don't have, you know, more than a year or two of experience. So I think that's the foundation. Getting an MPH is a little bit different, right, like you're going to build a network as an like. Getting an MPH, um, it can be a bit of an insular community, so you'll you'll start learning, you know, uh, people from different nonprofits and things like that and networking, um, but yeah, I think there's a few different pathways in but it is challenging, like it's it's not the biggest organization in the U S 1600 people, you know, and only like three, 400 of those from the U? S.
Michael Lane Smith:So it is pretty small. Yeah, I had a similar experience coming out of college. You know, not everyone has the job lined up beginning of senior year, um, although a couple of my previous interviews have um, so I appreciate that perspective. Uh, it certainly can be a slog. Uh, last question and I'll let you go, but you know how do you think your job and your work at Bath has changed you?
Conner House:Oh man, that's a really good question. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely given me new skill sets and a lot of just expertise in this world. I think it's definitely made me into a global thinker, um, and and how we approach these problems. Um, yeah, and it's it's helped me understand, like, how to make impact happen. Like change isn't something that you just snap your finger and it happens. Like it takes a lot of dedication, it takes people rallying around a mission, it takes organizational processes, it takes money, like it takes long-term thinking and not just thinking in terms of, like band-aids and stuff, right, so I think it's given me a lot of depth on how to make an impact.
Conner House:And now I know a bunch about medical oxygen and if you would have told me that in college that I'd be like school and medical oxygen, I would have been like what are you talking about? So I don't even know that's awesome, exactly.
Conner House:So a lot of different health areas that I've had exposure to. That it's really cool and we didn't get to that too much in this interview, but like being able to hop around to other health areas is just super interesting, from P5X, malaria to to, you know, HPV vaccines and cervical pre-cancer screening, things like that Like it's just all super interesting and impactful.
Michael Lane Smith:So yeah, wow. Well, thank you, connor, I really appreciate you taking the time and, uh, yeah, we'll catch up soon.
Conner House:Thanks, michael, it was great talking, thank you.
