This summer, two Notre Dame students worked as communications interns with CrossOver’s development team. Connor Martin and Bianca Widjaja, both rising second years, were a joy to work with and contributed so much to CrossOver’s communications efforts. Learn more below about Bianca and Connor and the excellent work they did for CrossOver.

Connor Martin is a second year student studying chemical engineering on the premed track at Notre Dame. He is interested in pursuing a career related to public health and healthcare accessibility.

At CrossOver, Connor worked on an overhaul of our website design and organization. We’re still making final content updates, but you can see some previews of Connor’s work here. Above, see a section of our home page that will help website visitors navigate quickly to the information they most need. Connor worked hard to make our website better serve those who use it, especially our patients. We look forward to launchng the redesign in the coming months.

Reflecting on his experience at CrossOver, Connor writes, “My experience working with CrossOver will certainly stay with me as I continue my educational and career journey …. CrossOver has also broadened my sense of what health encompasses. To be healthy is a complex interaction of physical, social, and mental factors. Understanding this balance will be vital to my future as a healthcare provider and public health practitioner …. CrossOver taught me how to put myself in someone else’s shoes, as well as how to work across groups with different technical understandings. To further this growth, I’ve decided to become certified in COVID-19 contact tracing as a way to continue to work with vulnerable individuals experiencing unprecedented challenges.”

A screen shot preview of Connor’s redesign of CrossOver’s website

Bianca Widjaja is a second year student studying neuroscience/pre-health, with a minor in international development studies. She is interested in global health, mental health, and neurodegenerative diseases.

This summer, Bianca worked on two main projects: creating informational graphics for CrossOver’s social media channels and beginning an oral history project to collect stories about CrossOver’s past and present. Bianca created our oral history project from scratch, researching best practices, developing an infrastructure, and conducting our first oral history interviews.

In her reflections on her time working with CrossOver, Bianca writes, “Real ‘preferential option for the poor’ consists of the notion that we have something to offer towards those who could benefit from our help—not to make us feel good about our own abilities but rather to ensure that those we serve can lead better, happier, healthier lives for themselves and for their future generations. Being able to conduct service with CrossOver is a prime example of this mindset, because CrossOver does a great job of taking care of its patients with full compassion and thoughtfulness.”

Bianca interviewing Helen Nunley, RN, CrossOver volunteer and board member