Student Spotlight: Jenna Spero, T’24/MPH’24

Jenna Spero began her dual MBA/MPH program between the Tuck School of Business and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth with seven years of healthcare experience spanning health system strategy, operations, and digital transformation. 

With a degree in journalism and global health, Spero began her career with a global communications firm’s healthcare practice when public health and its attendant issues captured her interest. “I shifted from storytelling to directly designing and leading healthcare programs,” she says.  

This led Spero to become a Global Health Corps fellow. Spending her fellowship year at a federally qualified health center in Boston, MA, she led the center’s communications and fundraising efforts and launched a patient portal improvement initiative that included a guided workflow redesign and staff training. 

“I was able to take that experience to New York-Presbyterian Hospital’s community and population health division, leading telehealth across our Ambulatory Care Network,” she says. “As the liaison to all of our specialties, we looked at the full suite of telehealth applications—from remote monitoring and consults to video visits—to further our population health goals on how to deliver care.” 

Spero’s passion for creating more human healthcare experiences is central to her long-term career goals in healthcare services. She recognized how an MBA would further her impact on healthcare and began looking into schools with strong healthcare programs. Dartmouth, with its accelerated dual MBA/MPH program and community of faculty, students, and alumni, stood out. 

“The research legacy of the Dartmouth Atlas is exciting to be a part of through the MPH program,” Spero says. “Dartmouth’s focus on clinical practice as a lever for public health outcomes is important—healthcare delivery is not a commodity. Geisel excels in both the macro view of variation in practice across the country and variation in outcomes at the intersection of healthcare delivery.” 

Spero was deeply involved in Tuck’s healthcare community, serving as co-chair of Tuck’s Health Care Club and as a Tuck Center for Health Care Fellow. As an MBA/MPH candidate, she conducted a year-long capstone research project; her capstone focused on interoperability between provider organizations, identifying recommendations for health systems navigating clinical data exchange. She and Professor Robert Shumsky co-authored a book chapter on operations management with Dartmouth Health’s radiation oncology department as a case study. They will be teaching the lessons of that chapter during the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM)’s summer school to be held at Dartmouth this June. 

After graduating, Spero will join Oliver Wyman’s Health & Life Sciences practice. As a healthcare consultant, she looks forward to working quickly and deeply with a range of industry stakeholders, from payers to providers.

Spero says she has had “an amazing time at Dartmouth because of the social learning culture—people get to know each other in a deeper, richer way. There is a shared sense of this among students and faculty that is unique. There is a special magic here.” 

Written by: Susan Green

POSTED 6/4/2024 AT 12:06 PM IN #MBA/MPH (With Tuck School of Business) #studentspotlight #dual degree