Nico Ntim-Addae, Daytime MBA, 2026
Out of all the courses I have taken thus far at Fuqua, none have cemented my career vision while simultaneously making me a more informed US Citizen as much as HSM’s Week in DC – Health Policy class. I deeply enjoy experiential learning experiences, and what better way to learn about how health policy is influencing business decisions in the United States than visiting the nation’s capital and meeting experts in the field, then ruminating on their statements throughout the term at Durham (and meeting even more experts)? As a Health Sector Management (HSM) Fellow at Fuqua, I expected to gain tools to analyze business challenges in healthcare. I didn’t anticipate how deeply policy would shape my journey, leading me to accept my deferred admission to Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health as a part-time (Master of Public Health) MPH student in Health Systems & Policy to supplement the business skills in health sector management that I acquired during my Fuqua degree.
During our time in Washington, DC, I learned firsthand how legislation and regulation ripple across the entire health sector. Conversations with leaders in policy, government, and industry opened my eyes to the underlying complexity in the health system and further introduced me to the nuances that exist in the intertwined legal considerations and business decisions in the health sector. I understood how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) influenced industry and how the differences in the funding structures underpinning Medicaid/Medicare led to health systems undergoing a major restructuring to account for the changes due to the slow (but steady) shift from fee-for-service to value-based care. This course led me to become a more informed citizen and an impassioned business leader in the healthcare sector.
Due to this course and the core HSM bootcamp, I was equipped to be an informed and curious reader of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act and expected regulation changes coming to the healthcare industry. It further enabled me to engage with the wider HSM community, especially with our Executive MBA members, and learn from their wealth of experience. Their diverse perspectives as clinicians added a depth of understanding that has broadened how I think about health care and my place within it as a consumer and leader.
At one point over the summer, our HSM community shared the latest changes to the FDA’s priority review voucher system. I recognized how a seemingly technical regulatory shift could have enormous financial and strategic implications, which related easily to the work I did as part of my client work at my internship at Deloitte.
Health sector leadership requires fluency in both business strategy and health policy. I knew my time in Washington, DC would be a unique opportunity to see healthcare from the policy side. What I didn’t expect was how deeply it would shape my own path and how far it would open my eyes to the central role policy plays in shaping the health sector. Looking back, the HSM experience has been more than professional development; it’s been a catalyst for finding my voice in health policy. And I’m excited to see where this journey leads.