Before Courtni Jeffers came to the University of New England (UNE) in Portland, Maine as an educator and doctoral candidate, she’s trailblazed an impressive career inspiring community health and wellbeing. Her heartfelt approach: Helping communities restore, build and channel their power.
“Community power is what we need to dismantle structural and systemic inequity,” says Courtni. “For me it's about community power restoration and I'm just a public health person who relays or is a facilitator of conversations.”
Moving from Indiana to New York City at 40 to earn her master’s in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, Courtni’s academic and philanthropic achievements speak volumes about walking the walk.
Currently she is the Director of Thesis Advising/graduate programs and Assistant Clinical Professor in Public Health at UNE, a workshop facilitator at Maine Health, and an Adjunct Professor of Narrative Medicine and workshop facilitator at Columbia University. When she’s not advocating on the frontlines, she’s also earned a second Masters, one in Public Health from George Washington University.
“Originally I wanted to go to medical school because I wanted to change the medical system,” says Courtni. “Then I realized I would be so busy practicing that I wouldn’t have time to create the change. Now, combining narrative medicine with public health, I feel I am exactly in the right place. Through all this I can take a social justice lens and help explore the social determinants of health and work to help bring more compassionate, more human care. Public health with the combination of Narrative Medicine is the perfect way to go into communities and listen to the individual stories of people, not just study research samples.”
“To love without any other motive than just to love.”
Enter Tulie!
Short for “Tulipa,” the Portuguese word for tulip, Courtni adopted this seven-year-old blonde, Winnie the Pooh-esk terrier with floppy ears five years ago from a rescue organization that brings abandoned dogs living on the streets and beaches of Puerto Rico to the United States. Tulie is one the dogs that Courtni rescued and who became family — each with their own heartbreaking stories. Tulie and her sister had been flown to the United States after their mother had been hit by a car, and both of the pups showed signs of their injuries from the accident.
Calling her dogs, “my people,”Tulie, Finnegan (who she lost in 2017), and her other dogs have taught her how to heal her own wounds and “to love without any other motive than just to love.” She’s also learned: You do not rescue anyone at the margins. But if you stand beside them — and honor and listen to their stories — we are all rescued.
After moving to Portland in recent years, it was Tulie who took the lead making friends around the neighborhood.
“This is a very dog friendly city, and Tulie knows every dog here. She loves running on the beach and I love watching her and being with her.”
Radical listening reimagines empowerment and equality.
Courtni says her passions “lie at the intersection of population health and individual well-being.” She is missioned to equip others to “receive and give accounts of self in order to further individual and community healing through narrative and cultural humility.”
Recently she was named to the Board of Directors for the Friends of Woodfords Corners. Courtni also recently led a forum led by UNE of Portland city leaders discussing the complex issue of the disproportionately high rate of homelessness in Maine.
She believes that it is through those narratives that America’s communities discover immense reservoirs of courage, resilience and imagination that drive the power for people to chance course for well-being and justice.
“Radical listening helps us explore out-of-the-box community partnerships,” says Courtni.
Narrative Mindworks Questionnaire
1. What is your motto?
I am a 70%-er. Not out of laziness or apathy but because I love all the things I get to do in my career so, for me, I save enough room in each of them to breathe, reflect, and be grateful. I don’t want to be a person who gives 110% to things that cause me to only be able to pick one or two of the things I love. All the things I do (e.g., teaching in public health, teaching in the NM certificate, running workshops, teaching in the PA program, working with neurodiversity programs, finishing a doctoral program) intersect so well with each other and make me feel like me—like I have something unique to offer the world. To give up one because I’ve given more than necessary to one or two would be such a loss to my work and myself. I am not burned out because the things I have chosen to do are part of what I am passionate about and I have found that because of that passion and synergy saving 30% of me as a reserve for the times I do need to give 110% to something, makes me better at all of them. It makes me a better person in general. Having 30% in reserve makes the extra intense times doable rather than a sacrifice. I recognize it is an amazing privilege that I am able to make this choice.
2. What is your greatest achievement?
My greatest achievement is getting to where I am in my education. A lot of complex childhood trauma says I should be a statistic. I am the first in my family to go to college and the first to leave the small town I grew up in. Statistics say I shouldn’t have a doctoral degree or get to teach at two incredible universities—get to choose what I want to do with my life and do it. Statistics say I shouldn’t have an amazing independent life on the coast of the gorgeous State of Maine. But here I am. I’m pretty proud of that. I, of course, did not do this in a vacuum. I have had and do have amazing people in my life--personally and professionally.
