Image
Loading...
Degree: Master of Business Administration ’26
Project Team: Advancing Community-Based Models of Health and Social Care in North Carolina (2025-2026)
Bringing together experience in health care, consulting and technology, Sydney Grube spent the year helping her Bass Connections team identify ways to better connect North Carolina families with the health and social care resources they need.
A finalist for the Bass Connections Award for Outstanding Mentorship, Sydney recently shared her Bass Connections experience with Natasza Gardner (Assistant Director, Bass Connections). The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Please tell me about your academic background and what attracted you to Bass Connections.
As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, I worked in a prostate cancer lab, which got me excited about health care more broadly. After graduating in 2020, I worked in consulting in the inpatient hospital space and then at a startup focused on helping people with chronic kidney disease.
After a few years at the startup, I started thinking, “Okay, what’s next for me?” I wanted to broaden my horizons and was especially interested in change management, human-centered design, behavior and the human side of technology. That’s what led me to Duke’s MBA program in 2024.
During my MBA, I completed the Health Sector Management Certificate and was a Margolis Scholar at the Margolis Institute for Health Policy. I really valued the opportunity to meet people from different disciplines, and it was through the Margolis Institute that I learned about Bass Connections.
Bass Connections was a unique opportunity to use and develop research skills in real-life scenarios and to work as part of an interdisciplinary project team. My interests in human-centered design in healthcare led me to the Advancing Community-Based Models of Health and Social Care in North Carolina project team.
What was your role on the team and how did your perspective on mentorship evolve?
An important role I played was as a liaison between the faculty team leaders and undergraduate students. I was able to clearly communicate the students’ concerns and translate next steps to them. The team leaders included me in organizational and planning meetings, which allowed me to get to know their communication styles, priorities and research outside of the project, and it also gave me insight into structuring long- and short-term projects.
I really valued that all four team leaders were focused on the work we were doing and invested in creating a safe and invigorating learning environment. They listened to student opinions and made a concerted effort to create opportunities for everyone, regardless of student level. Those strategies are certainly ones I’ll be taking into my next job.
How did the project unfold?
We spent the first semester getting to know one another, making strategic decisions and learning the concepts and skills we would need to execute our research goals. In studying models of health and social care, we had to deepen our knowledge of Medicaid’s healthcare payment models and the North Carolina health policy landscape. Our main focus was how we could more effectively connect children and families to health and social care resources, which have historically been challenging to navigate and include many barriers to access. A big part of that was thinking about how to build trust between healthcare organizations, local community-based organizations and the families they both support.
I got to see firsthand that, while you create project plans and set goals, something unpredictable may come up that’s out of your control. For example, a funding decision at the state level changed the entire course of our project focus. You have to be willing to adjust and adapt. This is what we had to do when the original program we wanted to study paused. We changed directions and ended up working with North Carolina Integrated Care for Kids (NC InCK)—a Medicaid-based program that partners with community-based organizations to connect kids with health and social resources.
Our team conducted interviews with four Durham community-based organizations during the spring semester. These gave us insight into what was working well, as well as areas of improvement for better connecting families to NC InCK. It also allowed us to identify areas of focus for future iterations of the project.
What skills did you develop?
I wanted to practice different ways of visualizing information. Previously, I’d created strategy-focused and instructional design presentations, but I had never worked on a policy brief, literature review or poster. In my mind, those formats seemed very academic and complicated. But once I began working on the literature review, I realized that the process was not so different from other ways of visualizing information. I was taking information, understanding it and synthesizing it for a particular audience. It also helped me see more clearly what gaps existed, and where we needed to do more research.
Making our team’s research poster was different than I expected and a lot of fun. I got to think about how to put it together in a way that would attract people, clearly explain our project and allow us to give a brief “elevator pitch” about what we had been working on. It was useful to utilize existing skills in new contexts and translate information for different audiences.
How has Bass Connections impacted your professional goals?
In September, I’ll start a consulting role at Deloitte, where I’m excited to draw on my health care and technology background to help clients navigate transitions and new programs. I’ll also be able to apply what I’ve learned about translating information across audiences and bridging the perspectives of employees and managers.
Bass Connections affected my professional future in two ways. First, the skills I gained through acting as a bridge between student and faculty perspectives will serve me well when I have to connect teams across different levels and areas of focus. I was able to practice breaking down bigger concepts into understandable and manageable pieces, using language tailored to specific audiences, and communicating with students and using their feedback to inform the direction of the project. A lot of the consulting work I will be doing involves large technology transformations, but I will also be the liaison between employees receiving the change and the people managing it.
What advice would you give future students?
The beauty really is in the team. I would never have interacted so closely with the faculty leaders or met my undergraduate team members if I had not been part of this project. I’d encourage future students to lean into those relationships and get to know the people on your team on a more meaningful level, beyond just project work.
I also wish I had had something like this during undergrad because it is such an amazing, hands-on, real-world experience. It’s one thing to learn about concepts or theories in class, but it’s another to actually do the thing you are studying, especially for an entire year. Most internships last a few weeks or months, so you only get a small sampling of the work. With a year, you really get to dive into a project, see some of the outcomes and think about where the research can go from there.
July 2026