“I lived with parents, grandparents and great-grandparents in one house” says Baker, who recalls the living quarters that she once shared with nine other people until she headed off to college in the late 1990s. “Having my elders in my life had a huge influence on me because they were big on education.”
Though she was the first in her immediate family to attend college — gaining acceptance into the prestigious University of Pennsylvania — her accomplishments were celebrated by family members who remained deeply supportive even as she decided to press on for an advanced degree.
Now, at the age of 35, Baker is an assistant professor in the Master of Public Health Program at La Salle University and credits her family and mentors like Dr. Loretta Jemmott, a world-class researcher and nursing faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, with helping her to develop a keen interest in public health issues.
Baker’s dramatic rise to become one of the nation’s leading researchers on developing ways to stem the HIV crisis, particularly in minority communities, was hardly predictable.
As a psychology major at Penn, Baker was unsure of her career trajectory until she enrolled in Jemmott’s human sexuality class during her junior year and became fascinated by the subject.
Impressed by Baker’s performance in the class, Jemmott recommended her for a job as a research coordinator working with her husband, John, who runs the Center for Health Behavior and Communication Research at the Perelman School of Medicine at Penn.
