Akilah King, MPH, is Chief Executive Officer of Room to Grow, a nonprofit that provides critical support to families raising babies born into low-income circumstances through structured parenting and child development programs that start during the last trimester of pregnancy and extend to the child’s third birthday. Ms. King received her Master of Public Health degree in Global Health in 2015.
You have many accomplishments: What are you focused on now?
As chief executive officer of a nonprofit, I’m now focused on bolstering our current operations infrastructure and fundraising capacity in preparation for our next stretch of programmatic growth. Building and maintaining organizational durability is essential to successful scaling.
What were some of the most challenging career issue(s) you faced?
One was overcoming my own imposter syndrome. Although I’ve always seen myself as a leader, there have been times when I’ve doubted whether I have what it takes to truly make a difference—until I realized I was comparing who I wanted to be to other leaders in the field. After some self-work, I learned to understand that my unique leadership style and philosophy are what make me so effective. The same playbook doesn’t work for everyone, and there’s more than one pathway to achieving social impact. As one coach once told me, "Leadership is like golf—different club, same swing fundamentals." I think of this every time I’m faced with a new leadership challenge. Whether it’s navigating the organization through the COVID-19 pandemic or developing our next five-year strategic plan, I have foundational leadership qualities that I can always count on.
How, specifically, did your training at Mount Sinai contribute to your success?
My time as a Mount Sinai MPH student helped broaden my perspective of public health. Beforehand, I had spent extensive time in West Africa supporting the opening of an orthopedic hospital and conducting clinical research on orthopedic patients. During my time there, I was naturally drawn to community health—infectious disease and malnutrition specifically. Up until that time, I thought of public health as just an offshoot of medicine. Through my time at Mount Sinai and post-graduation, I began to see public health as a societal driver and highly intersectional and interdisciplinary. This is important for us to acknowledge in the nonprofit sector as we need to do a better job of partnering with each other, data-sharing, and developing comprehensive, wraparound programs for our constituents.
Any advice for today’s students?
My advice for today’s students is don’t doubt that you can be a changemaker—and accept that you can’t plan 100 percent for your career trajectory.