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After the Diploma

A world of service for Johnson County grad

Kentucky School Advocate

June 2018

When she was inducted into the Johnson County Central High School Hall of Fame this year, the program noted that Shegufta Shefa Sikder had “parlayed her academic success into a career fighting for the public health and safety of those less fortunate.” That is no exaggeration.

Sikder is a senior technical advisor at CARE in Patna, the largest city in the Indian state of Bihar, where she works with CARE’s sexual reproductive health program. The global nonprofit works to save lives, end poverty and achieve social justice. Prior to that, she was employed by the United States Agency for International Development in Washington, D.C., first as a technical advisor for research for its Bureau for Global Health, Office of Population/Reproductive Health, and then as a senior technical advisor for research for that same bureau, working as the health team leader for USAID’s largest Asia offices. She won multiple awards for her work from USAID for leadership in prevention of child marriage and commitment to ending preventable deaths in Bangladesh.

Prior to joining that agency, Sikder led, trained and managed multicultural field teams conducting field health and nutrition programs and studies in Bangladesh for a project under the auspices of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Besides Bangladesh and India, her work also has taken her to Afghanistan, Nepal and Pakistan.

After graduating from Johnson Central High School in 2004, Sikder attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in international studies. She has a master’s degree in health science, global disease control and epidemiology; and a doctorate in global disease control and epidemiology, both from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Sikder is carrying on a family tradition; she is the daughter of Dr. Ayesha Mannan Sikder and Shoyeb Sikder, who have lived in eastern Kentucky for the last 20 years and served health care needs of the community there.