Staff Spotlight: Meet Ann Ricksecker, PHC Program Executive!

Would you be able to tell me a little about your educational background?
My undergraduate degree was Urban Studies. I practiced as a public health professional from 1973 to 1990 before I got my master’s in Public Health at Columbia University. It was before Drexel had their executive MPH program, so for two years I went to the Columbia program and was trained in Public Health. I also teach Health Policy and Advocacy at the School of Public Health at Drexel University.

How did you get into the field of health care non-profit work?
It was through women’s reproductive health. All of my early years I worked to make sure women had access to high quality/low cost contraception, abortion services, pregnancy testing and options, and high quality birth experiences. I did it primarily through an organization called Concern for Health Options: Information, Care, and Education (CHOICE). I was the executive director ultimately, but I worked at CHOICE for fifteen years before that. So I was always very involved with community-based, non-profit, public health work. Obviously with a group like CHOICE, you’re working with all kinds of community-based efforts. So my heart was really in that. I had a short stint at a university setting. It’s now Drexel, it was Hahnemann, and in between it was taken over by a group called Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation (AHERF). While under AHERF, they went bankrupt and I moved all of our division in the School of Medicine to the Health Federation. It included all of the programs you know of here, like the AIDS training center and Early Head Start; all of these services got lifted into the Health Federation in 1999. My career has always been very grounded in community-based work.

What would you say is one of the most rewarding parts of serving as the Program Executive for the Philadelphia Health Corps?
Without a doubt, it’s the members. The members and the host sites are just so special and amazing in so many ways. Watching the year progress with all the members revving up, doing their service, having all those “Aha!” moments, is just incredibly great. And it’s also watching Health Corps grow as an AmeriCorps program. This is the best AmeriCorps program there is. It’s the best run. It’s the best in terms of impact. And I know I’m biased, of course, but this is the most remarkable of them all. When host sites report back how amazing it was to have the service and have the members there, it’s what this is all about. It’s making more from less; it’s having more care offered in ways that wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for members.

Where do you see Philadelphia Health Corps in 5 years?
I think Philly Health Corps is going to have some growth over the next 5 years, probably because of Sara’s leadership, in the way that we work with other AmeriCorps programs in Philly. I think we’ll see growth in public officials’ understandings of what we do in Philly Health Corps. There is already movement I can see happening in that respect. I think we’ll also see changes in growth in general. I believe community service in our country is going to be growing and hopefully that will result in more slots for Health Corps as well. That would be great.

What was the first job you ever had?
I was a carhop at the A&W Root Beer stand in Galion, Ohio and I was hired, probably illegally… I was 14! While I didn’t do carhopping on roller skates, which is what I think most people think of, I was still a carhop. I was paid 55 cents an hour and I was one of the people that went between the kitchen and the cars to take the order, get the order, and then hook the tray onto the car window so that people could sit in their cars and eat. Now that I think about that, it sounds really repulsive! I never want to eat in my car. But it was very social and people hung out there. Carhops got to be in the middle of that social scene. All of my best friends were also carhops. So for about 2 years, I did that.