Her Personal Triumphs Inspire Her Service
Keamiyah Walker, ELMSN-FNP ’23, originally wanted to go to school to understand why some people, specifically those who are low-income, suffer worse health outcomes than others who are well-off. However, after earning her bachelor’s in public health, she realized that wasn’t enough.
“My undergraduate degree helped me better understand social determinants of health and how to improve outcomes, but I needed more. In order to really understand healthcare, I need to know what is going on at the clinician level, like actual health conditions and treatment options, and what the patients go through both at the hospital and after they leave,” she says. “The Samuel Merritt nursing program definitely prepared me for the patient populations I am interested in, like those who are marginalized, who lack access to care, and who are medically and socially complex.”
Walker knows all too well the perils of falling between the cracks in our healthcare system. When she was just seven years old, her mother, a low-income teen mom who lacked access to proper healthcare, died from meningitis when the severity of her symptoms was overlooked. “That experience was something I always thought about during different stages of my career planning,” she reflects.
Coming full circle, Walker, who was a teen mom herself, is now working as a registered nurse at the same community hospital where her mom passed away so many years ago. Walker’s introduction to working as a nurse was a true trial by fire. She was only in her second semester at SMU when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. With a tremendous need for nurses and an executive order from Governor Gavin Newsom that allowed nursing students to start working while still in school, Walker found herself on the front line at Kaiser Permanente’s medical center in Oakland.
“There were literally hundreds of patients lined up outside, people were passing away left and right, there were too many bodies to even fit in the morgue. It was an intense environment, and a really good opportunity for me to learn real nursing,” she recalls.
Undaunted, and with characteristic tenacity, Walker continued to work with patients while juggling the academic rigors of school, even auditing many additional courses in the Physician’s Assistant program. As a single mom without family support, completing her nursing degree took tremendous resilience and grit, and necessitated significant student loans.
Her talents and determination did not go unnoticed, and she received several grants and scholarships to support her education. One was the Ecker Scholarship, which is awarded to nursing students with academic merit and economic need. Any help she received was a blessing. “The Ecker Scholarship really helped support me in getting back and forth to my FNP clinical sites around Oakland and the South Bay so I could see my patients, and for supplies and materials needed for school,” she explains.
Judy and Roger Ecker, who have supported SMU and its students through charitable donations since 1975, met Walker at a scholarship luncheon last summer. “Keamiyah is an amazing person,” says Judy Ecker. “She told us some of her background and we are incredibly impressed by all that she has accomplished.”
Beyond annual gifts, the Eckers also established a charitable remainder trust that is designated to support their endowed scholarship fund. Charitable remainder trusts allow donors to establish a future legacy gift by transferring cash and assets to a trust that can pay the donors interest income and gives them a tax deduction. Eventually, the remaining funds will directly benefit the school and students like Walker.
“There are a lot of first-generation college students at Samuel Merritt like Keamiyah who are working hard, and we want to support them,” says Roger Ecker. Judy agrees, adding, “Keamiyah is ambitious and inspiring and has really succeeded in a lot of ways. It’s just made us so proud to know that we played some little, tiny part in what she has done with her life.”
