Combining career aspirations and public service
Daisy Wang’s focus on social impact-oriented endeavors blossomed during her time at MIT, where she found a myriad of ways to give back to her community: from volunteering with local swim teams to facilitating health education workshops in Kenya. Wang’s passion for finding solutions to social issues has had a far-reaching impact at the Institute and beyond, and the PKG Center is proud to honor her work as a 2024 Priscilla King Gray Public Service Award undergraduate recipient.
“Daisy has masterfully blended the pillars of scholarship and direct community work,” wrote her nominator, Professor Sally Haslanger, the Ford Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
Wang was initially inspired to enact systemic change through her coursework. As a student, Wang majored in biological engineering and minored in women’s and gender studies–with aspirations of becoming an OB/GYN. Each course offered Wang individual frameworks and ways of looking at and approaching problems. As Wang told MIT News, “biological engineering demands creative problem-solving and boundless iteration, while women’s and gender studies requires a different, equally critical skill set.”
Wang expanded her social change skillset in 20.380 Biological Engineering Design, which teaches students how knowledge and principles of biology, biochemistry, and engineering are integrated to create new products for societal benefit. As a part of the class, Wang and a small group of fellow undergraduates teamed up to create a microneedle patch to detect and treat opioid overdose. The patch that they designed automatically administers Narcan, a treatment that cannot be self-administered, when it senses an overdose.
Wang also participated in EC.718/WGS.277 D-Lab: Gender and Development, led by Professor Haslanger and D-Lab Associate Director for Practice Libby McDonald, which teaches students how to integrate gender-sensitive strategies into their work. The Fall 2023 iteration of the course gave students the opportunity to assist the Society Empowerment Project (SEP), an organization and D-Lab collaborator in Oyugis, Kenya.
She traveled with a team of peers to Kenya during IAP 2024 to lead a D-Lab Community Capacity Building (CCB) workshop aimed at addressing the critical issue of teen pregnancy. The Homa Bay County region faces serious food insecurity and poverty, along with an increasing rate of teen pregnancies and HIV/AIDS. The team’s goal was to empower young parents to identify ongoing challenges and co-design next steps for promoting their well-being.
Professor Haslanger noted Wang’s leadership and contributions to the team: “She thoroughly grasped the concept of co-design and was instrumental in enabling buy-in from the participants; she was incredibly resilient, and found ways to respond to unexpected circumstances to carry on with the workshop; and she not only engaged the SEP participants, but also supported other D-Lab team members who were less confident and less comfortable in the circumstances.”
Wang’s successful experience in Kenya follows her involvement with PLEASURE@MIT, a student-led effort to promote healthy relationships and eliminate sexual violence at the Institute. As the group’s Managing Executive, Wang has led workshops throughout the MIT community on topics such as relationships, intercourse, sexual orientation, self care, and consent. “I joined PLEASURE because I was inspired by the mission and wanted to make an impact on campus relating to sexual, mental, and emotional health,” said Wang. She also appreciated the team-oriented nature of the program, noting that “[her] favorite thing about PLEASURE is the amazing community of passionate and dedicated peers.”
Wang’s clear commitment to community service and team efforts carried into her work as a PKG Social Impact Intern. Wang interned with the Cambridge Health Alliance, where she helped the Health Equity Research Lab implement a digital mental health survey tool that monitors patients’ symptoms. Wang innovated improvements to the tool for future use and created pathways to make the survey more equitable and accessible, especially for those who face a language barrier or lack access to the internet. It was through this PKG-funded internship experience that Wang decided to specialize in implementation science, which looks at outcomes to figure out whether interventions are effective, in her future career as a physician.
Wang also participated in PKG’s IAP: Health Program as a Catalyst-PKG Scholar. Catalyst, a selective fellowship opportunity that puts full-time career professionals through a six-month rigorous process to learn how to identify and address an unmet need in the healthcare field, extended its opportunities to undergraduates in the 2024 PKG IAP: Health Program. As part of the first cohort of PKG Scholars, Wang was “pushed to thoroughly understand a problem before even considering a target of intervention.” Wang found the program to be transformative in her problem-solving: “This new way of thinking is one that I will take with me throughout my remaining time at MIT and also beyond. I am also grateful to have met the other Catalyst fellows and all the advice they gave me regarding my future career.”
On top of her outstanding academic, leadership, and community work, Wang spends time engaging in direct service that makes an impact in Boston and Cambridge. As a complement to her interest in healthcare equity, she accompanies patients undergoing surgery, treatments, or recovering from illness as a volunteer in Massachusetts General Hospital’s Pediatrics Department and Oncology units. She also serves as a medical advocate at the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, where she accompanies survivors of sexual assault to the emergency room, helps plan their next steps, and connects them with further resources. Finally, Wang spends her spare time coaching a team of 15 synchronized swimmers at Cambridge Synchro, where she competed on an artistic swimming team in high school.
The dynamic of social change and community engagement defines Daisy Wang’s extensive history of public service at MIT and beyond. From the classroom to the communities of Kenya, Wang’s experience solving systemic issues and creating better healthcare experiences has made a broad impact. For those interested in pursuing public service, Wang suggests, “There are so many problems in the world, and finding the ones that are right for us to tackle and ones that are right fit for our skill sets is part of the battle. Take the time to look inside yourself and understand what you are passionate about.”
“Daisy’s commitment to service is broad and deep,” said Professor Haslanger, in recommending Daisy for the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Award. “I am sure that her future will continue to see such interdisciplinary efforts.”