As graduation approaches, many UW Master of Health Administration (MHA) students pursue a post-graduate administrative fellowship as a valuable entry point to their career.
An administrative fellowship provides a unique opportunity for contextualized training in health care administration. Fellowships focus on developing core competencies and leadership characteristics, as well as fostering close working relationships between the fellow and senior management.
Fellowship Spotlights
Each year, several MHA graduates accept offers for nationally competitive fellowships at health care institutions. Fellowships provide a unique opportunity to boost leadership skills, utilize professional skills in a fast-paced environment, and build a lasting relationship with an employer.
Katie Litwinski – Providence Health & Services
Katie Litwinski has worked at hospitals up and down the West Coast. While providing data analysis and admin support for Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, she faced myriad roadblocks to connecting kids with services.
“It pushed me in the direction that I want to take my career, which is addressing fragmentation of care and continuity of care,” Litwinski reflected.
Her proudest achievement was analyzing patient outcomes data “to paint a picture of why we should be responding to a certain patient need.” She’s drawn to working at flagship institutions where she can maximize her impact, so it’s only fitting that she was awarded a fellowship at Providence Health & Services. Litwinski credits her MHA faculty mentors for advising on applications, running mock interviews, and providing insider tips on workplace culture.
Aline Roland – SCA Health
Aline Roland seeks to combat inequities in health care. For her, this mission is personal: growing up in a low-income immigrant household, she watched her family members struggle to access care. Roland has channeled that passion into volunteering for refugee-serving community health organizations, helping UnitedHealthcare members develop personalized health plans, and supporting Spanish-speaking caregivers through UW’s Caring for Caregivers Online (COCO) Health.
She lauds the MHA for their support of first-generation students with mentorship, career guidance, and advice on everything from dressing for an interview to combating impostor syndrome.
Her next chapter? A fellowship at SCA Health, a 300+ network of ambulatory surgery centers. UW’s MHA program combines public health and business principles, and she’s eager to bring that multidisciplinary viewpoint to SCA.
“It’s so important for healthcare administrators to have this background so when they’re making a tough budget decision, they’re thinking about population health and equity and social determinants of health,” Roland reflected.
Fellowship Sites
Here are a few of the recent fellowship sites for our MHA graduates:
- Banner Health (Gilbert, AZ)
- CHI Franciscan (Seattle, WA)
- Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore, MD)
- Kaiser Permanente (Northern & Southern California)
- MultiCare Health System (Tacoma, WA)
- Northwell Health (Great Neck, NY)
- Northwestern Medicine (Chicago, IL)
- Providence St. Joseph Health (Irvine, CA)
- Seattle Children’s Hospital (Seattle, WA)
- Stanford Children’s Health – Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (Palo Alto, CA)
- Sutter Health (Sacramento, CA)
- Swedish Medical Center (Seattle, WA)
- UNC Health (Chapel Hill, NC)
- Yakima Valley Farm Worker’s Clinic (Yakima, WA)