Bookend To Success: Alum Nebu Kolenchery Pursuing MPH After Making Impact in the Field

Saint Louis University (SLU) undergraduate alum Nebu Kolenchery made a splash early in his public health career, and now has returned to SLU to receive his Master of Public Health (MPH) degree. 

Kolenchery’s experience taking an ‘Introduction to Global Health’ course and participating in a campus ministry spring break immersion trip to West Virginia his freshman year inspired him to switch majors and join one of the first cohorts of SLU’s undergraduate public health program.

“A SLU undergraduate degree is not just about the classroom,” he said, speaking to the overall student experience.

During his senior year in the undergraduate program, Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, and the entire region reckoned with the impact of structural racism on the lived experience of Black Saint Louisans. Kolenchery became involved in the University’s response to those events and learned that he liked working within large institutions to create positive community impact. This lead to him pursuing the Coro Fellowship after graduation. Taking part in this leadership development program led him to working with Spring Schmidt. She became a mentor and a dear friend. His Coro experience eventually influenced him to return to work with her at the Saint Louis County Public Health Department a few years later.

Kolenchery went on to work with leading public health organizations throughout his career including Deloitte, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the US Department of Defense. Some of his most notable work within these organizations includes consulting on the Zika response efforts and supporting the world’s largest Electronic Health Record implementation.  Finally, Kolenchery returned to work with Spring Schmidt at the St. Louis County Health Department as the Division Director for Communicable Disease Response, where he worked on projects including the Covid-19 contact tracing program, TB and Hepatitis clinics, and managed the largest sexual health clinic in the region.

A team led by Kolenchery responded to the mpox outbreak in St Louis, and he stated that it is the project that he is the proudest of. The response included preparations long before the first case in the area. It required that the department leverage relationships with other health systems built during the pandemic and work with community groups to lay the foundation for a community-centered vaccine roll out.

Now during his current graduate coursework, Kolenchery has chosen to apply the knowledge gained from his career and concentrate in public health practice to get a broad scope of classes from every department in the college and pursue his goal of leading a state or local public health department in the future. He currently works as the Chief Revenue Officer for Flourish & Thrive Labs, a consulting firm that works with state and local public health departments.

Kolenchery’s love for St. Louis is no secret.

“It’s the place I have spent the most time in and has made the greatest impact on me. It’s a place I care about very deeply,” he said.

Outside of his work, he plays for Fleur de Noise, the St. Louis CITY SC drumline, and loves to cook and find the best restaurants in the area including his favorites: Everest Cafe, Basso, and the Pan-Asia Supermarket in the county.

Kolenchery says one of the most important questions students can ask themselves is ‘how do I want to do the work I want to do?’ and encourages them to think about the different types of roles within public health.

For example, you can work in public health while working for the government, for non-profits, at a hospital, at a foundation, in consulting…the list goes on and on. He encourages students to learn that public health occupies many sectors and try a few of them to find how they best fit in. 

Kolenchery says that students should build their network by reaching out to professionals and simply asking about their story and asking who else they might talk to.

“If you know what you want to do, go for it! If you don’t know what you want to do, which is completely normal, ask yourself other important questions: What kind of work do I like to do? What do I want my life to look like? Do I like working in teams?”

College for Public Health and Social Justice

The Saint Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice is the only academic unit of its kind, studying social, environmental and physical influences that together determine the health and well-being of people and communities. It also is the only accredited school or college of public health among nearly 250 Catholic institutions of higher education in the United States. Guided by a mission of social justice and focus on finding innovative and collaborative solutions for complex health problems, the college offers nationally recognized programs in public health and health administration.