Innovative public-health careers coach
During her forty-two-year career at the School of Hygiene and Public Health (now the Bloomberg School of Public Health), Betty Hall Addison had a knack for recognizing and filling voids no one else noticed. Starting in 1978 as administrative aide to the dean of students, Addison says she arrived “with a business degree and good office skills.” As she dealt with numerous nonacademic issues and listened to students’ personal concerns, she quickly realized that many matters, particularly job counseling for students and recent graduates, were not being addressed.
To fill the vacuum, Addison began to mentor students as they prepared resumes and coach them on interviewing skills. In 1984, she organized the school’s first job fair and invited twelve local agencies and firms to participate. With an ever increasing understanding of students’ needs, the following year Addison began an intense program to secure a master’s degree in counseling at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, then on the Homewood campus. She completed her degree in just eighteen months of night classes while still working full time, even serving briefly as acting dean of students. “I never said, ‘that’s not my job,’” Addison explained, “I just did it, whatever it was they asked me to do.”
Fortified with her new credentials, Addison pushed for and established new initiatives in the School of Public Health, including Offices of Student Services, Career Services, and Disability Support Services. Later, she became a Fulbright Scholar and spent two months in Germany studying the activities of school administrators at every educational level; she returned with new insights for the East Baltimore campus.
In 1994 Addison started the Diversity Summer Internship Program (with funds from the National Institutes of Health to provide participants’ wages) for top science students at Dunbar High School to work on research projects at the School of Public Health. Over the years the program evolved to include underrepresented college students and science teachers from all over the United States and now attracts more than six hundred applicants to fill up to twenty positions each summer.
Over her career, Betty Hall Addison worked tirelessly to teach career strategies to public-health students and graduates, suggesting innovative ways to design, plan, and implement job searches in a competitive market. Also involved in the wider Johns Hopkins community, Addison was a member of the Black Faculty and Staff Association since its inception and served as its president in 2004–5. Focusing on leadership skills and encouraging an environment that promotes success, she became a Certified Executive and Leadership Development Coach. Since retiring in 2019, she continues to work part-time through the Health Policy Research Scholars Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.