In mid-February, Medical Teams welcomed Lauren Taylor as our Chief of International Programs. Lauren came to Medical Teams with a wealth of experience in international relief and development and working in fragile contexts. Prior to Medical Teams, she served as National Director of World Vision International’s Jerusalem – West Bank – Gaza program. Her passion for helping people move beyond suffering and into healing, wholeness, empowerment, and opportunity has been inspirational to both the people we serve and all of us at Medical Teams. Lauren’s guidance and leadership have already made an impact!

Today, we’re excited to share more of Lauren’s story, in her own words. Read on to hear about her journey to humanitarian work, how she found Medical Teams, and her reflections on a recent trip to visit our programs in east Africa.

Meet Lauren Taylor

What drew you to humanitarian work?

I had never even been overseas until after college. I went to teach in Kenya for 4 months, but it wasn’t anything in my background.

I had originally wanted to be a lawyer, and spent most of my life seeking to become a lawyer. In college, though, I did an internship with the Department of Justice and I realized I didn’t want to be a lawyer. [The internship] was working on educational opportunities, and they were still dealing with school desegregation in 1995. I saw that they always had to deal with the last precedent that was set in the court. They couldn’t just start from scratch, even though the world had evolved so much since tghe original court cases. I wanted a career that had more freedom, more creativity.

I ended up back at square one after that. But there was a gentleman I ended up meeting with who walked me through discerning my calling and career from many angles. I also realized it was like the Frederick Beuchner quote, about how your calling is the place where your passion meets the world’s deepest hunger.

And I realized [my passion] was people’s basic needs.

That’s what put me on the track of: I’ll go to Kenya, I’ll teach school, I’ll see. And then from there I just kept going deeper and deeper into issues of poverty.

In graduate school, I studied complex humanitarian emergencies. When I graduated, I was led to work with a group called Word Made Flesh. And there, it was more around bringing critical faith principles to life. It was a chance to integrate my faith perspective with the world of development, the world of transformation.

It was in that space where I realized that, as much as I love humanitarian work, it often feels like a Band-Aid. I really wanted to dive into root causes of injustice, of poverty, of lack of peace, and so forth. So, I ended up heading on a completely different route. And it’s been the most amazing thing ever because I see it as Kingdom work.

That’s what has kept me in the humanitarian field. I see it as a way in which Christ is bringing forth his Kingdom. If we have eyes to see it, the work that we do – for me, whether it’s with Medical Teams or in my previous organizations – it’s all part of Kingdom work.

I have a good friend, Bill Haley, that always says, “the Kingdom comes when things work as God were intended.”

For me, it looks like families being able to have access to health care, systems working appropriately for the widow and the oppressed, children being able to grow and develop, when there is justice…those are all things that are the way that God designed them to work.

When we partner with the Holy Spirit — we use all of our best professionalism, the gifts and skills he’s given us, all the best practices of the industry — I feel like that’s actually an opportunity for the Kingdom to come.

And that’s what I’m most excited about.

How does your previous experience compare to Medical Teams’ work now?

It’s all work on the margins. So whatever language you use, whether it’s “work on the margins” or “fragile context” or “last mile services” …it’s all work with poor and oppressed people who are the most vulnerable among us. People who don’t have access to services, people who are neglected somehow in their part of the world.

It’s a different environment with Medical Teams. Those same populations — the poor, oppressed, the neglected — are living in such places of scarcity. That’s been one of the big contrasts.

The places where we work are places of scarcity, or places with hard conflict happening, in neglected parts of the world.

In some ways, that’s similar to my previous work from a political standpoint. But in other ways, it’s very different from people’s interest, right? People are interested in what’s happening in Israel and Gaza, for example. It’s harder to get interest sometimes in Sudan or Ethiopia, or for refugees in Uganda and Tanzania.

Lauren Taylor, new Chief of International Programs, visits a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Photo by Meletetsega Getachew.

What brought you to Medical Teams?

It was actually the word “wholeness.” I had been hearing from the Lord in my own life – and feeling like I’d come to a place of wholeness. That was part of what helped me really feel called to Medical Teams. I kept hearing from everyone, “Medical Teams, Medical Teams.” I got the job invite from 7 different people, up to a few days before the deadline. But I felt like “Medical Teams? I’m not medical!”

I had supervised community health programs, but I’m not “medical.”

When I went to the website, though, I saw that Medical Teams’ actual desire is wholeness. It’s to be present to people and their suffering, but also to actually break down the barriers, whatever they might be. To play a part in the Kingdom of God, to bring them to wholeness.

It’s to be present to people and suffering, but it’s actually to break the barriers, whatever they might be. To help play a part in the Kingdom of God, to bring people to wholeness.

And so that’s how I ended up on this faith-inspired journey. It might have stayed at just being with people and their suffering. But I might have missed the beauty of the degree to which God wants people to be whole and to flourish and be healed.

What did you notice about Medical Teams’ work in East Africa?

In general, one of the pieces that stood out to me for all 3 countries  — Uganda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania — is how remote the refugee camps are. They’re in very remote and rural places, usually places of scarcity, as I mentioned before. If it was an urban environment, people would have more access to resources. For me, it was eye-opening.

I will say, I’m excited to see Colombia’s program. They’ve been leveraging some of the ways to work institutionally and, eventually, to have integration of refugee services into the National Health Service.

Beyond that, it was just so good to get to know the programs of Medical Teams. That was absolutely critical. And the other piece that was great was to hear how much our institutional donors glowed about our work.

I’ve always had good donor relationships in the country offices I’ve worked in. I always experienced good donor conversations when I was in my last organization.

But these donor meetings were above that. They glowed about our work. Both U.N. and U.S. government agencies were so excited about the partnerships they have with us, in the quality of the work that we’re doing and the way in which we work together. You can see it in the fact that they keep asking us to take on more and more clinics. But the other piece to this that I saw was that a lot of times, there is still not enough funding from these donors, which keeps us doing the minimum for the refugees. . Donor funding, both institutional and private, is declining. There’s not a lot of funding and the needs are so great.

But in places where we’ve had a chance to invest long-term, like in Uganda…I saw such beauty there.

There was actually a moment there when I felt called to pause in the middle of the day. So, I did.

And what I saw was this: I saw people interacting, these beautiful social interactions. I saw babies whose mothers were feeding them. I saw well-done facilities, which just adds to a sense of the quality of care that’s available. I saw there were trees, of course, growing on the grounds.

And trees are always symbolic for me as signs of human growth. They’re signs of human development and of the Kingdom coming.

I saw all of that, and I had this moment when I thought, this is what things can be when we have enough time and prioritization of resources in a systematic and strategic way.

I saw this image of digging the right channels for water to flow in the right places, from an organizational standpoint. So that’s an image I’ve been using with the International Programs team to talk about where we’re going.

Lauren Taylor talks to Roger Kadima, Ethiopia Country Director, on a recent visit. Photo by Meletetsega Getachew.

How do you think about community-led programs versus volunteer teams?

[Community-led care] is the more sustainable approach. There is national capacity that should be developed and be used. I do think that it has another cost to it, though, and the cost is that you have a long-term presence in the country.

You have to think about your salary and benefits that you’re giving to national staff. You have to make sure that they’re properly cared for. You take on more risks, in many ways, because you have a long-term institutional presence that has to be managed.

But ultimately, to me, it is the right direction to go in. It builds people’s capacities and it’s more sustainable.

At the same time, I do see circumstances when a particular specialty might be missing. If there are still ways to leverage people’s capacity to come in and offer services that maybe don’t exist in the country, or to increase the professional skills of staff with new expertise or new services, I could see a role for targeted exchanges of volunteers. Maybe not whole teams, but specific instances.

What do you like to do in your personal time?

I love being out in nature. For my personal time, I love being — by myself or with friends — in nature in any shape or form, even if it’s just eating outside.

I just moved back to North Carolina after nearly 12 years abroad. I love to be in the mountains. I love evergreen trees.

I love to be in water. And here, it’s endless lakes, endless swimming pools, endless ocean shoreline. I feel quite blessed to be living here.

Building the Kingdom together

Lauren Taylor with some of our team in Ethiopia! Photo by Meletetsega Getachew.

We’re grateful to have a compassionate and faithful leader like Lauren! Her experience, empathy, and vision for the future are a blessing to Medical Teams.

Learn more about How We Heal.