Gillings School alumni named to Triangle Business Journal’s 40 under 40 list

July 7, 2021

Five alumni of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health were honored by Triangle Business Journal as among the Triangle region of North Carolina’s best and brightest business and community leaders younger than 40 years. The 40 under 40 list highlights people who will shape the Triangle for years to come.

The Triangle Business Journal has issued this list for 21 consecutive years, and the 2021 list includes five UNC Gillings alumni: three alumnae of the Department of Health Policy and Management — Morgan Jones, MSPH, who received a Master of Science in Public Health from UNC Gillings in 2007, Randi Towns, BSPH ’15, and Dharmi Tailor, JD, BSPH ‘10, who received Bachelors of Science in Public Health; an alumna of the Department of Health Behavior, Rachel Page, MPH ’11; and Andrew Herrera, MPH, MBA, who received a Master of Public Health from the Public Health Leadership Program in 2017.

Morgan Jones

Jones is vice president, strategic planning & business development at Duke University Health System. She has quickly risen through the ranks at the organization after starting as director, enterprise wide planning. Before moving to Duke University Health System, she spent six years at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, where she started as a presidential management fellow in 2007. In her current role, she leads Duke Health’s Strategic Planning team and is responsible for enterprise wide planning and business development for clinical strategy and implementation.

Randi Towns

Towns was recently promoted to director of health equity at UNC Health, where she has worked for seven years in roles ranging from intern to program manager, and she is currently seeking a Master of Healthcare Administration degree at the Gillings School. During the pandemic, she led a project that provided COVID-19 testing to underserved and minority communities that had experienced disproportionate impacts. Prior to joining UNC Health, she worked at Piedmont Health Services and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. She serves as a board member for Village of Wisdom, a Durham-based nonprofit that aims to close the academic opportunity gap by protecting the intellectual curiosity and positive racial self-concept of Black children through the love and wisdom of their families and communities.

Dharmi Tailor

Tailor is a partner and head of legal — employment, portfolio and regulatory at Roivant Sciences, where she has been promoted quickly – twice in about two years. As well as attending the Gillings School as an undergraduate, she received a Juris Doctor degree at UNC and served as an editor of the North Carolina Law Review. She has also worked to advance the interest of people who are minorities in the profession, organizing local events with South Asian attorneys.

Rachel Page

Page serves as deputy director for Go Global NC and director of data and policy analysis and is still connected to the Gillings School as an associate research fellow at the UNC Center for Galapagos Studies. In her current role, she identifies, captures and analyzes relevant data and information to build and evaluate the organization’s global impact and engagement. As a research associate, she explored evidence-based strategies and public health best practices that focus on building capacity for policy, environmental and systems changes related to chronic disease and injury for the North Carolina Department of Public Health. She also served as project coordinator for HOPE Accounts for Women — which supports, educates and strengthens women to lead healthy fulfilling lives and builds assets through financial literacy — and has worked at the Sheps Center for Health Services Research.

Andrew Herrera

Herrera was recognized for his leadership and work with Curamericas Global, where he serves as executive director. Curamericas Global strives to improve the health of women and children in remote areas around the world, including countries such as Haiti, Sierra Leone, Guatemala, Kenya and Bolivia. He joined the organization in 2009 and has held his current position since 2013, where he directs strategic initiatives to provide basic health education, medical services and community involvement to areas that lack access to adequate maternal and child health care.

In 2020, Herrera also won a Health Care Hero Award from the Triangle Business Journal for this work.

The 40 Under 40 winners were honored at a virtual awards ceremony on June 24.

Contact the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu.