I first considered a career in public health when I interned at the Department of Family Health of the Ghana Health Service as an undergraduate. Attending national conferences focused on strategies to reduce maternal mortality in Ghana, I recognized that to make sustainable progress, it is critical to address the underlying social inequalities that exacerbate negative health outcomes. To achieve this goal, I am seeking acceptance into the Global Health and Population Doctoral Program at the Harvard School of Public Health. I began investigating the relationship between social factors and health as a research assistant at the University of Michigan Sleep Disorders Center. During my five-year tenure there, I facilitated projects that primarily investigated the relationship between maternal sleep quality and maternal and perinatal outcomes. As I immersed myself in emerging research on maternal sleep, I was alarmed by the paucity of studies examining social differences in sleep quality. Therefore, I independently studied how race influenced the relationship between sleep q...