Inspiring grad: Anjali Pinto 

When Anjali Pinto began her master’s degree in nursing at UIC in 2022, she already had one career under her belt. 

Pinto had worked for years as a photojournalist, and her photography appeared in national and international publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

She particularly enjoyed portraiture and storytelling. Yet the empathy that later led her to nursing was sometimes difficult to manage from behind the camera.

“I got very easily attached to people and their stories,” Pinto said.

But for the last two years, Pinto has been making a career change. On Dec. 14, she’ll graduate from the UIC College of Nursing’s master’s degree program for non-RNs, or the graduate-entry master’s program. Like other College of Nursing graduates, she’ll take board exams to become a registered nurse.

What’s different about the non-RN program is that students enter with degrees in fields other than nursing, like Pinto did with her photojournalism degree. Graduates become advanced generalist nurses prepared to take leadership roles in their field.

Pinto’s career change from photojournalism followed another big shift in her life, after her husband died unexpectedly.

“After he passed away suddenly, I felt like I needed to find a career that gave me more purpose and used my skills and talents,” Pinto said.
 
“Nursing is kind of the perfect job, because you get to be in that intimate space with people and see them through difficult circumstances or hard news. But there’s a lot more flexibility in what kind of role you take on, what kind of schedule you have.”

A friend who is a nurse practitioner encouraged Pinto to enroll at UIC. The university’s commitment to health equity and working in Chicago communities were persuasive factors.

This year, Pinto has been working intensively with Chicago migrant communities. As part of UIC’s Outbreak Response Team, partnered with the Chicago Department of Public Health, she helped test and vaccinate people in migrant shelters during the measles outbreak last spring.

The experience led to another community health project that started in May, serving families living at migrant shelters. Pinto planned, evaluated and implemented the project and won a Schweitzer Fellowship to support it.

While working with the Outbreak Response Team, she came face to face with the needs of people living in Chicago’s migrant shelters. Seeing a four-story shelter in Pilsen that housed 2,500 people, filled “wall-to-wall” with cots, showed her a need she could help address.

Parents at the shelter lacked cribs for their children and babies. So Pinto focused on providing them with what she could.

Partnering with the Lawndale Christian Health Center, she handed out sleep sacks for babies and gift baskets with essentials like diapers. She gave presentations on safe sleeping practices, warning against the increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome from co-sleeping. Perhaps the biggest comfort was the momentary respite she and her team provided moms who came for the presentations.

“Even though they’re in this congregate living situation, many of them shared that they don’t feel like they have people they can trust,” Pinto said.

Once a month, they gathered a group of moms at the shelter to talk about safe sleep practices and share a hot meal. “It’s a very small thing, but it felt familial in a way,” Pinto said.

She knows first-hand that being a mom while balancing other commitments takes a lot of work. But having her daughter see her graduate will be a reward.

“I feel a lot of pride knowing that she’s going to be at my graduation,” Pinto said of her 4-year-old daughter. “That’s really meaningful to me — that I accomplished this while she was young and that she’ll know and see me as a nurse as she grows up.”