An “Army Brat,” Carrie Norbeck, MPH, CHES spent her childhood moving from one place to another, from Texas to Germany, eventually landing in Washington State where she attended high school. An unabashed science geek from the beginning, Carrie’s passion in life was zoology with the ultimate goal of working with marine mammals in a zoo or aquarium. She spent her formative years learning everything she could about the creatures that she loved, culminating with acceptance into the Zoology Bachelors of Science degree at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. After competing alongside all the other pre-med/pre-dental students to succeed in her required science/math courses, she was accepted during the summer between her junior and senior year of college into a competitive internship at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium to do her dream job. After several weeks, she discovered…it wasn’t what she really wanted to do after all.
Though disconcerting, this realization pushed Carrie onto a path of discovery that led her to a second Bachelors of Arts degree in Social Services. After graduating, she and her husband Brandon spent the next two years serving together in the United States Peace Corps. During her first posting in China, Carrie taught college and graduate students to improve their science and professional writing in English. After the SARS epidemic broke out in China in 2003, Carrie and Brandon were transferred to Jamaica, where Carrie worked with a local health department to implement community health education. This work confirmed her growing passion to work in the field of public health and prompted her to return to school. Upon completion of their service to the Peace Corps, Carrie returned to Seattle to attend the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine. In 2006, she completed her Masters in Public Health in Community-Oriented Public Health Practice. Her focus of study was on health behavior and health communication, with a focus on community-based participatory research. She maintains her credentials as a certified health education specialist (CHES) from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC).
Carrie began her career at Fox Chase in 2007 as a Partnership Program Manager for the Atlantic Region of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Information Service. In this role, she supported multiple institutions in the region to engage the medically underserved by providing training in program planning, health education and communication, clinical trials education, and community engaged research to public health agencies and organizations. Since 2010, she has served as the Regional Coordinating Director for Region Four of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities’ (CRCHD) Geographic Management Program (GMaP), working to enhance capacity in the areas of disparities research; primarily by working to increase the recruitment and professional development of underrepresented investigators and students to research careers. In her free time, Carrie enjoys travel, reading, and exploring the outdoors with her husband and two daughters.