As a first-year student, Loyd got involved with Madison House almost immediately.

“It helped me connect to the community in Charlottesville and have some perspective on my own privilege and feel more like a community member,” she said. “I was not that comfortable in the social scene, in the sorority and fraternity scene. I felt a little bit like fish out of water. … I was a little overwhelmed.

“And so Madison House was a nice way for me to find my people and way of being.”

Once a week, Loyd made a 40-minute drive to Louisa with a fellow volunteer to tutor the teenager.

“I remember being really challenged by her in ways that were important for me to face,” said Loyd, who lost touch with the teen after college. “She would just stand up for herself a lot, kind of like, ‘I don’t want to do that and you have no idea how hard my life is.’

“I don’t think I’d ever really reckoned with that, and she took me way out of my comfort zone in ways that were really powerful and I think she was very brave for doing.”

…

The experience solidified what Loyd wanted to do with her life.

Today, the mother of two is the executive director of PIVOT, a global health non-profit that works in Madagascar, an island country located off the coast of Africa, to break cycles of poverty and disease.

The organization’s mission, in Loyd’s words, is to make universal access to quality medical care a “human right.”

Read the rest of this UVA Today story here.