Carly Menker

Hello! For some reason or another, something has drawn you to here - so with that, welcome! I’m Carly — a pleasure to meet you.

Right now, I’m a Research Coordinator at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago while simultaneously finishing my pre-medical requisites in the Northwestern University Premedical Post-Bacculaurate program. Previously, I earned my MS from the Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing at NU in Health, Environmental and Science Journalism and was a Comer Foundation Scholarship recipient. I have a BS in Journalism from Northwestern as well, where I dual minored in Dance and Global Health Studies. I aspire to head to medical school one day and always have, but through my journalistic experiences, I want to also develop international and domestic communication and writing skills as best I can.

I'm pursuing a dichotomy of interests - journalism/medicine - but, through my experiences, I’m trying to find their intersections. With that, I hope to both tell the truth through stories, bring light to important issues such as health inequality, and of course, heal people someday. When I was six, I began struggling with health adversities, prompting me to become very familiar with a hospital environment. This has sparked my inspiration for delving into medicine, but through that, I found overlap with journalism along the way.

I want to combine the things that have made me, well me.

I’ve had exposure to print, magazine, and broadcast journalism, as well as many hours spent doing radiation oncology research benchwork in the Woloschack Laboratory, scientific papers and shadowing hours in the CTICU (Cardiothoracic ICU) and other ORs. Theatre became a big presence in my life - in undergrad, I was on the executive board and a teaching artist for Seesaw Theatre, a group that devises multi-sensory accessible and inclusive theatre for those with autism and other developmental differences.

As well, I’ve always been passionate about climate change, environmental and wildlife conservation, which I’ve been able to channel into my professional career by producing climate-based journalism stories on topics such as enhanced weathering and climate change threatening El Niño crop and rainfall boosts with severe disruptions. By seeing the world through my camera lens, I am able to tell climate, nature and wildlife stories via capturing blink-and-you-miss-it kinds of moments in my photos.

You can find me at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago’s Stanley Manne Children's Research Institute helping in children’s research and advocacy, specifically in Voices of Child Health in Chicago (where we release monthly reports on parental concerns in Chicago), ARISE Health Lab (where we explore connections between cardiometabolic markers and adverse childhood experiences) and as editor of the Department of Pediatrics Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Newsletter. I am a published author of two children's books, A New Normal (ISBN#1535108215) and Penelope and the Poetry Pirates (ISBN#1537790811), and do freelance photography (@cgmenker on Instagram).

I appreciate talking and connecting to new people, so don’t hesitate to contact me, I’d love to learn about you!