JILLIAN HOLBROOK
Leading with Excellence, Resilience, Integrity, Ambition, and Empathy.
LEARNING STATEMENT
Building Interdisciplinary Bridges
In my roles as a learner and leader, I am driven to pursue knowledge, personal growth, and interdisciplinary problem-solving approaches—applying my core values of excellence, empathy, integrity, resilience, and ambition in the process. Intellectual curiosity inspires me to take coursework outside of my traditional academic disciplines of neuroscience and psychology—whether through the University of Washington's Interdisciplinary Honors Program or coursework in other departments. From Human Trafficking in an Era of Globalization (Honors 232/American Ethnic Studies 398) to Capoeira (Dance 287) to Murder (Honors Sociology 270) to Food in Film (Nutrition 390), I enrich my worldviews and engage in learning opportunities for the joy of furthered understanding, individual development, and knowledge sharing.
As a student of the behavioral sciences, I like to say that my approach to learning centers on understanding people and the roots of human experience, while my leadership endeavors to enrich human life and our ways of being. Through developing my leadership competencies, utilizing experience-based learning, and exercising humility for alternative perspectives, I build cultural competence to meet people where they are. An interdisciplinary approach allows me to draw connections and derive meaning from my pursuit of knowledge. Moreover, it encourages my commitment to understanding confluences of biological, social, psychological, and sociocultural factors that shape my vision of comprehensive, empathetic care for others. I believe in lifelong learning and that striving for personal growth across areas of knowledge prepares me to promote dignity, respect for autonomy, foster inclusion, and solve complex problems.
Learning as a Lifelong Pursuit
My fascination with the complexities of the nervous system and behavior was documented at its inception in a photograph of my nine-year-old self holding a human brain for the first time. Malleable gray tissue with a myriad of grooves, gyri, and sulci engulfed two minuscule purple-latex-covered fists. Outrageously oversized lab goggles threatened to slip into the middle of a beaming smile. ​
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That same little girl looks back at me from a frame on my desk, surrounded by textbooks, novels, polaroids, ticket stubs, college memorabilia, and a rarely empty mug of caffeine. While I cannot relive my fourth-grade classmates’ noses wrinkling in disgust at the pungent odor of formaldehyde, I am proud to have graduated from holding brains to dissecting them—pursuing my childhood dreams of studying neuroscience and psychology with College Honors. At the intersection of research and medicine, I look forward to applying my education to innovate accessible diagnostic tools, therapies, and rehabilitative care for diverse patient populations in the neuropsychiatric space.
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​Through the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, I found ways to connect esoteric science with the visceral emotions of human experience across creative mediums—prose, debates, dance, journalism articles, mental health resources, and my own lesson plans. In The Brain and the Healing Power of Poetry (Honors 398), an Interdisciplinary Honors seminar, I examined the power of art in grief and rehabilitation—presenting my original poetry on identity, trauma, and loss in a reading at the University Bookstore. Embracing vulnerability, I explored personal expression and the challenges of navigating neurological disorders, discrimination, and the weight of physical and emotional loss.
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Interdisciplinarity further supported my curiosity in scientific communication and writing, particularly through my commitment to understanding, identifying, and dismantling inequities in research, healthcare, and education. From advocating improved prison nutrition in The Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (Honors 393) to presenting a literature review on how neuromodulation—a translational medical stimulation technique—can aid in recovery from transcutaneous spinal cord injuries for Brains in Motion (Psychology 448), or even composing an electrophysiology lab report on cockroach action potentials in Systems Neuroscience (Neuroscience 302), the amalgamation of unique curricular experiences supports my passions for justice, investigation, and improving quality of life.​​​
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Overall, my time at the University of Washington is characterized by my involvement in leadership, research, service, and international engagement—the Honors pillars of experiential learning. Through my identities as a Connection and Community Champion, Neuropsychiatric Care Innovator, Interdisciplinary Global Scholar, and Equity and Inclusion Advocate, my learning and leadership coincide.
Moving forward, I recognize that exposure to diverse stories of humanity, novel environments, and complex challenges will help me actualize support for human wellness that is proactive, inclusive, and deeply attentive to the individualized human experience. Each person deserves to feel seen, connected, and above all, joyful. I am excited to unite my interdisciplinary understandings to revolutionize care from bench to bedside in an empathy-driven, experience-informed manner.
Spring 2025: Leading the Pack. Through the University of Washington's Husky Leadership Certificate (HLC) Program, I reflected on and developed a holistic understanding of my learning and leadership experiences, including my core values, leadership philosophy, and leadership identities. I presented a talk at the Community Engagement & Leadership Education (CELE) showcase on leveraging interdisciplinarity and experience-based learning, which allowed me to describe how my leadership revolves around joy, the human spirit, and caring for others in ways that are scientifically rigorous yet holistically compassionate—treating patient populations, first and foremost, as people rather than reducing identities to clinical labels.
