Sangha of Auspicious Companions

She Worked as a Janitor at Yale Hospital for 10 Years. Now She’s Returning as a Doctor

Shay Taylor’s journey is a powerful reminder that it’s never too late to rewrite your story. For years, she walked the halls of Yale New Haven Hospital with a mop and cleaning cart. But now, she’s walking those halls with a stethoscope — as a doctor. She began working as a janitor at 18, after graduating in the top 10% of her class at Wilbur Cross High School in Connecticut. Then, nearly a decade later, when her mother suffered severe lung damage after a house fire and struggled to breathe, Taylor reached out to the hospital’s CEO. Within days, her mother was diagnosed with vocal cord dysfunction, a rare condition, and she realized that if she could be a voice for her mother, “maybe I could do this for other patients.” By day, she studied at Southern Connecticut State University, later earning a master’s degree from Quinnipiac University to complete the science courses needed for medical school. By night, she kept working as a janitor while saving money for application fees and the MCAT. Now, she’s preparing to return as an anesthesiology resident at Yale New Haven Hospital, ready to care for patients and ensure their voices are heard—just as she once fought for her mother’s.

Be The Change

Today, notice someone whose work often goes unseen, and meet their eyes with genuine acknowledgment. Ask their name if it feels natural, or simply offer a sincere “thank you” that recognizes their full humanity, not just their function.

When Strangers Access Shared Consciousness

A human identity that we are individually separate from one another fosters fear, competition, dissonance, aggression and more — a fight for survival. Aterah Nusrat suggests that human identity may be evolving “to a shared sense of self that is not separate from the planet, the cosmos, and even more essentially, the Divine, or Consciousness, as the ground of our existence.” This potential is espoused by many faiths and thought leaders, such as Christianity’s one body, Quaker collective silence, Thich Nhat Hanh’s concept of Interbeing, and current movements toward a Symbiocene Ecological Civilization in community with all of life. Aterah suggests that, more than countering our current destructive path “defined by fragmented and separate constructs of self,” this paradigm shift could become a “reflection point that could bring humanity into interbeing with an evolving cosmos as it awakens to itself.”

Be The Change

Rather than diminishing individuality, this new identity “relies upon authentic self-expression.” Join or create a gathering in your community that cultivates shared consciousness through mindfulness and presence.

What’s Rare About This Lab That’s Searching for New Medicines

When Kelly Chibale left North America to take a job in Africa, a well-meaning mentor asked him if he was sure he’d want to leave the world-class facilities and research opportunities that he had access to in the western world. But Chibale felt what he calls a calling from his spirit — to prove that world-class drug discovery could happen on the continent that carries the heaviest burden of malaria and tuberculosis, yet loses its brightest minds to institutions in wealthier nations. Of his time studying and working in the UK and US, he points out, “I saw the pharmaceutical industry employing thousands and thousands of scientists working in research and development,” and they were tackling the health challenges relevant to those populations. The Holistic Drug Discovery and Development Center he founded in Cape Town now employs over 75 scientists hunting for medicines tailored to Africa’s genetically diverse populations. It is a rare facility where the people most affected by disease are leading the search for cures. “It’s not just going from the lab to the patient, but it’s also vice versa, from the patient back into the lab,” Chibale explains. He, who once lay in a Zambian hospital as a child with severe malaria, was saved by a drug someone else discovered, and he’s now devoted to becoming that someone for his neighbors.

Be The Change

Today, notice whose expertise you’ve dismissed because of preconceived notions of where it came from rather than what it offered. Whether it’s a colleague from an overlooked department, a solution from an unexpected region, or knowledge from outside traditional centers of authority, pause and ask yourself: What am I missing by assuming excellence only lives in specific places? Then actively seek out and genuinely engage with one perspective you’d normally look past.