Jennifer Przybylo

Jennifer Przybylo’s dedication to social responsibility evolved in an unusual way. During a particularly difficult period in her adolescence, she sought out activities that would allow her to channel her teenage angst into productive, positive causes. When she began volunteering with a group that prepared meals for a local soup kitchen, she discovered the intense joy that could come from helping others and the satisfaction of knowing she’d made a difference, however small. She then organized a group to collect toiletries and makeup for a Chicago women’s shelter that provided a safe haven for homeless women and their children, many of whom had fled from violent homes. The shelter encouraged and helped its residents seek employment as a next step toward securing new lives and greater stability for themselves and their families. By collecting sample-sized toiletries and makeup that would otherwise be discarded or collect dust in closets, Jennifer’s group provided these women with items they could use when preparing for job interviews. For this innovative service work, Jennifer was named Illinois’s top high school volunteer by the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards. For her community leadership, she was honored as a United States Senate Youth Program Delegate and a Toyota Community Scholar.



​ As an undergraduate at Yale, Jennifer combined her love of service with along-standing passion for health promotion and medicine as the co-president of a campus health education group. It was through her experience with Peer Health Educators that she realized the power of health education to make a difference in the lives of those in her community and that longterm, sustainable change was best achieved through education and the advancement of knowledge. During this time, Jennifer gained additional leadership experience as chair of Yale’s Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee, the body responsible for distribution of university funds to the more than 300 student groups. In this capacity, she also served as a member of the executive board of the Yale College Council, and an appointed member of the Dean’s Office Committee on Undergraduate Organizations. After graduation, she earned an M.Phil. in computational biology at Cambridge University. There she promoted partnerships between business leaders and students with innovative technological or biomedical ideas as a member of the executive board of Cambridge University Entrepreneurs.

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In college, Jennifer discovered that she loved scientific research and the thrill of advancing the collective body of knowledge, albeit ever so incrementally. Encouraged by her research supervisors, Jennifer went on to pursue cancer research at world-renowned institutions: the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Oxford University, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Upon graduating from Yale, she received the prestigious Boell Prize for excellence in the senior research she had undertaken at the Yale School of Medicine. Her work has also been published in numerous journals. Currently a student at Stanford University School of Medicine, she continues to be actively engaged in both research and her community. Jennifer hopes that this book will help students and young adults not only discover their own passion for community action and sustainable change, but also provide them with the tools to make their dreams for this world a reality.