NU Loyal Members Help during the Pandemic

Posted on Friday, July 24, 2020

NU Loyal members are known for being steadfast and generous in their support for the University, and they share that spirit in their communities as well. Here are three stories from NU Loyal members who have responded courageously to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the last few months.

Ryan Padgett ’96

Ryan Padgett, a Seattle-based emergency room physician, might best be known to the Northwestern community as an All-Big Ten offensive guard who helped lead the Wildcats football team to the Rose Bowl after the 1995 season. After college, Padgett continued to keep himself in shape, missing only five days of work in his 21 years practicing medicine. Padgett was one of the doctors caring for an emergency room patient who ended up being the first known death from COVID-19 in the United States. When Padgett felt sore muscles and a headache in early March, he knew something wasn’t right. In fact, he was one of the first two emergency room physicians in the country to be hospitalized in intensive care with the virus. After three weeks battling the illness, he reflected on how grateful he was to have been taken care of by his colleagues on the front lines and spoke about his plans to return to work. Read Padgett’s story in the New York Times. 

Chinazo Cunningham ’90

Chinazo Cunningham is a physician, researcher, and professor of medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System in the Bronx. She was recently profiled in USA Today by another alumna, Christine Brennan ’80, ’81 MS. During her time at Northwestern, Cunningham was an All-Big Ten softball player for four seasons and is a member of Northwestern’s Athletic Hall of Fame. As a physician for more than 25 years and one of many doctors fighting COVID-19 on the front lines, she says that the coronavirus pandemic has essentially taken away the cornerstone of her career—the patient-doctor relationship. “With COVID, we’re so worried about getting infected … so there’s a limited time we spend with our patients,” she said. Throughout the crisis, she has found encouragement in the outpouring of support from people asking what they can do to help. Read Cunningham’s story in USA Today.

Sharmila Wijeyakumar ’19 MS

Sharmila Wijeyakumar is not only a vice president at the technology company Veriday, but also the founder and chief executive officer of Rahab’s Daughters in Barrington, Illinois, a nonprofit organization which fights to end human trafficking. Because of COVID-19, many traffickers are abandoning this illegal practice globally. Wijeyakumar says that despite this silver lining of the pandemic, there is a shortage of places to go for women and children who escape trafficking. Together with several of her master’s program classmates, Wijeyakumar is working to find housing for women and children in need. In Illinois alone, the organization has rescued more than 90 survivors of trafficking who have been impacted by the pandemic. For more information about ways you can help, visit the Rahab’s Daughters website.