Sometimes hearing a story about injustice can change the direction of a career. That is exactly what happened to 2002 UF alumna Carolyne St. Louis, J.D., M.H.A., the deputy ethics counselor and director of ethics at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, or NIEHS.
While working on her concurrent master’s in health administration and law degrees from UF’s College of Public Health and Health Professions and Levin College of Law, St. Louis learned about a South Carolina law that allowed for mandatory drug testing of women in labor that had affected women of color disproportionately. Women found to have drugs in their system after giving birth were handcuffed and jailed.
“The people who wrote the laws had good intentions for public health, but it was supposed to identify those individuals who needed help with parenting or perhaps rehab, but instead exposed significant medical bias,” St. Louis said.
Since that time, St. Louis has been using her legal and health administration expertise to serve the greater good. As she said, “Basically, I became a policy wonk.”
As a presidential management fellow at the U.S. Department of Labor, St. Louis helped promulgate several regulations in support of workers. She is proud of the Popcorn Workers Lung Disease Prevention Act that protects workers from breathing in harmful spores, and provides protective gear and clean air in which to work.
St. Louis talks about her experiences in civil service.
Q: What is your role as a deputy ethics counselor with the NIEHS?
A: Currently, I am shoring up the ethics and compliance function for NIEHS, such as hiring new staff, developing processes and procedures, and ensuring that staff conflicts of interest (perceived or actual) are addressed. I’m also advising NIEHS on international and domestic memorandums of understanding, training staff on government ethics matters, and lastly, assessing NIEHS related to ethics, risks and compliance.
The mission of the National Institutes of Health, of which the NIEHS is one of 27 institutes, is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life and reduce illness and disability. It is the largest provider of grants for research in the country and awards the most amount of money to institutions of higher education. That’s a lot of money leaving one source and we’ve got to make sure that there are no issues with those with decision-making authority.
From January through May, the Ethics Office is tasked with reviewing financial disclosures of civil servants to determine there are no conflicts for the public interest. Or, in determining there are conflicts, determine which remedies work for the public good. We do not live in a perfect world; my job is to untie knots.
Q: What is the best lesson you learned while at UF?
A: Find your cheerleaders (people who believe and encourage you). Thereafter, return the favor … feed your relationships. I would not have had the courage to not practice law in a traditional way if not for those around me who knew I would be much happier shaping health policy. They helped me see what that future would look like. That said, I don’t think any of us had government ethics in our bingo card.
Q: What does public service mean to you?
A: Public service is a public trust. This requires that I place my loyalty to the constitution and laws ahead of any private gain for myself or a few. As an officer of the federal government, I have been entrusted with authority to act on the people’s behalf. I hold this “authority” in trust to be used only for the benefit of the public good.
Q: What do you spend most of your free time doing?
A: I love to travel. My goal is to visit every continent before I retire. So far, I have visited five out of the seven and Australia is next on my list.
Q: What would people be surprised to learn about you?
A: I am a huge fan of all things science fiction and fantasy, and love Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. It doesn’t take long after meeting me before I work in a sci-fi joke or reference.
