Courtney Duran (B.S. ’11) has always been interested in health, but she didn’t always plan on going into the health information technology sector. In fact, when she arrived at Florida State, she expected to graduate with a major in biology and go on to become a doctor. However, after working as an undergraduate research fellow at Mayo Clinic, she realized that a career path change was in order. Her junior year, she switched her major to Information Technology.
Duran says the major switch “just made sense” to her. It also led her to be the College of Communication & Information’s first Garnet & Gold Society Scholar. She enjoyed being a part of that program because it gave her some recognition for the hard work that she did outside of the classroom and helped her reflect on what she did throughout college.
While attending Florida State, Duran worked at the Agency for Health Care Administration. Not much later, however, she packed her bags and moved to Atlanta, GA to pursue her Master’s in Public Health and to work for Booz Allen Hamilton as an IT business consultant under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her stay in Georgia was quickly followed by a move to Washington, D.C., to work for Booz Allen Hamilton as a senior consultant.
Booz Allen Hamilton is a consulting firm that has been awarded a contract to become the Marketplace System Integrator for the healthcare.gov website. Duran is basically a problem funnel and acts as the middle person between health insurance companies and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to ensure that customers are receiving the right quotes about how much they must pay for health insurance. She started shortly before Open Enrollment of 2015 when things were a bit hectic, to say the least.t
However, Duran loves her job and working behind the scenes where she can see all of the puzzle pieces coming together because she feels that she is helping people receive access to healthcare that they were previously unable to afford. In the future she may stay on contracts that support the Health Insurance Exchanges, or she may consider moving to a hospital system. Regardless, she says that she greatly enjoys where she’s at right now.
To learn more about Florida State’s IT program, follow this link.