Sister act: Alice, Nancy, and Tiffany Goh share a passion for helping others.

Thompson, Sarah S.

As the youngest of three, Tiffany Goh '07 didn't spend too long on her college search. After all, she'd already visited Cornell, and seen the breadth of experiences her sisters Alice '97 and Nancy '04 had found in Human Ecology and where it was taking them. Connected by their shared passion for social impact, the sisters would follow parallel tracks to embark on successful nonprofit and corporate careers.

Alice set the pace, majoring in policy analysis and management with an interest in education equity. After college, she embarked on a finance career, starting as an investment banking analyst and leading to senior roles in global business and client development. A decade later, Alice took her first nonprofit leadership role with Teach For All, a global education organization. This path was made possible by Alice's policy and finance expertise combined with her master's degrees in education and business from Stanford.

"I thought the training would be a good foundation for making an impact at an organizational level in education, whether for a school system, a nonprofit, or a company," Alice says.

Now at the Ford Foundation, a social justice organization, Alice leads strategic initiatives and programming opportunities for its Education, Creativity, and Free Expression Program as well as regional programming in four African offices.

Following Alice's lead, the sisters shared favorite courses, professors, and activities in Human Ecology and all spent semesters with the Cornell in Washington (CIW) program. For Nancy, who'd always wanted to become a doctor, these experiences shifted her career focus from medicine to global health, for which she says her biology and society major seemed "a perfect fit."

"I decided I wanted to gain more than just the technical knowledge. There's so much more than basic science that's needed to deliver high quality care and services," Nancy says.

During CIW, Nancy learned firsthand about health care issues in developing countries when she researched how pregnant, HIV-positive women decide to seek treatment. Instead of medical school, after graduation Nancy consulted for pharmaceutical companies on strategies to increase access to their medicines.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"We were only reaching patient populations in the U.S. and Europe," she says. "There was a greater need in developing markets, so I decided to pursue an MPH at Johns Hopkins."

Nancy is now senior program manager with the Clinton Health Access Initiative's Essential Medicines Team, where she creates partnerships and manages local initiatives to expand global access to life-saving treatments that reduce child deaths from dysentery.

Seeing her sisters' success, Tiffany opted for policy analysis and management, finance jobs, and business school. After earning her MBA and working for a nonprofit microfinance organization, Tiffany did an internship with Colgate-Palmolive, leading to her current job in its brand management department.

"I was attracted by the opportunity to build a bigger, more diverse global network and because it's a great general management opportunity," Tiffany says. "I see opportunity down the road to merge it, or the skills I'm gaining here, with my interest in helping those living at the bottom of the economic pyramid."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Whatever the sisters do next, Tiffany says they'll continue to be each other's support network. It's a value instilled by their parents, who came to the U.S. from Taiwan to pursue graduate degrees. Inspired by their work ethic, their emphasis on helping others, and their strong family ties, Alice, Nancy, and Tiffany--who live in the same New York City neighborhood--blaze their trails separately but together.

"We usually don't go more than two weeks without seeing each other," says Nancy.