Infinite Careers is a collaboration between Career Services (CAPD) and the MIT Alumni Association to explore career paths and the non-linearity of career decision-making. Read profiles of alumni with unique career paths, hear their stories, and network at a series of talks.
Education
- MIT, SB – Bachelor Of Science, 17 – Political Science
- MIT, PD – Post Doctoral, GSL – Global Studies and Languages
- MIT, PHD – Doctor Of Philosophy, STS – Science, Technology, and Society
Bio
Amah Edoh has been: an MIT professor (of African Studies and Anthropology), co-founder of a racial justice nonprofit, associate dean for a global gap year program, a coaching curriculum writer for first-generation college students, an arts festival producer, manager of a community-based health program, and more. Amah has long favored the scenic route: As an undergraduate at MIT, she changed majors five times, ultimately majoring in Course 17 with a minor in African Studies. Amah finally felt at home in the social sciences and humanities, though, and went on to be a Fulbright Scholar to Zambia after college, before returning to the US to pursue an MSc in Global Health at Harvard, and after that, a PhD in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) at MIT. Along the way, Amah has lived, studied, and/or worked in Belgium, Brazil, France, The Netherlands, Togo, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. She is a runner and a quilter, a meditator and a sometime procrastinator, and she’s eager to remind you that it’s OK not to know exactly what you want to be when you grow up.
What influenced your choice of undergraduate major? How has it shaped your career choices and professional ability?
It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to study. Ultimately, it was taking an anthropology class and feeling like, for the first time, I was in the right place – the kinds of questions we were addressing in class were the kinds of questions I was interested in. I didn’t major in anthropology in college (I got a PhD in it later), but that class marked my official shift into the social sciences and humanities, and my practice has unfolded across these disciplines since then.
What influenced your choice of graduate program/programs? How has it/have they shaped your career choices and professional ability?
I pursued a Masters in Global Health because right after college, I did research as a Fulbright scholar on the response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Zambia and I thought a graduate degree would give me the tools to do this type of work better. But I realized after the Masters that I was less interested in doing global health programming myself, than I was in the people and institutions that implemented these programs. And so I decided to pursue a PhD so that I could do research on my former field of practice. Having direct experience of the field I intended to research helped me articulate questions that were grounded in lived experience (rather than theory) first, and for me that was important.
Is there anything you wish you had done differently or more of while you were at MIT?
I took advantage of the many travel opportunities and traveled every break, and studied abroad for a semester. I would highly recommend that every MIT student do the same!
Last edited: March 2026
