A Black woman who once worked as a janitor at an Ivy League institution will now attend that same school as an anesthesiology resident.
In a heartwarming video on social media, Shay Taylor-Allen shared the moment she opened her acceptance letter while surrounded by loved ones.
The 32-year-old medical school student graduated in the top 10% of her high school class. Right out of high school, she took a cleaning job at Yale New Haven Hospital to support her family, the very same hospital where she was born.
She maintained her job while juggling college classes, but things took a drastic turn for her family when her mother became seriously ill.
“We brought her to the ER, and I just remember her crying and needing help,” she told WUSA. “The doctor pulled us aside and asked if she had a mental illness.”
After receiving questionable assessments and diagnoses from doctors, Taylor-Allen told People she approached the former CEO of the hospital where she worked and explained what was happening. Soon after, the hospital determined her mom was suffering from vocal cord dysfunction.
She never dreamed of being a doctor until that moment.
“It wasn’t the same day, but I went home and Googled how to become a doctor,” she said. “I just had this feeling that I wanted to help other people.”
Taylor-Allen enrolled in Howard Medical School at age 28, and after four years, reached the pivotal moment when medical students apply for residency matches.
In a twist of fate, the acceptance letter she received in March was from the Yale School of Medicine.
(@shayy.taylor)
“It was a surreal moment for me. I just jumped up and down,” she said.
Now, in her final year of medical school, she’s preparing to head back to the same place where she mopped floors to take hold of her future in a new way.
“A lot of other health care workers forget how important their jobs are. I hope I can show that,” she explained. “Especially with everything that’s going on in our country… that little hope of the American dream is still there.”
She hopes to make a valuable contribution to the communities she serves when she finally joins the hospital workforce and hopes to inspire other young people of color.
“We can do anything that we put our minds to — and people of color specifically, we’re needed in [the medical] field,” she told ABC News. “People that look like us [are] needed, and our patients are waiting for us to do it.”