Just inspiration in Black History Month

A happy aura of inspiration hovers around LaDavia Drummond Just, a 2006 graduate of the College of Pharmacy at the Medical University of South Carolina. She finds it everywhere, instills it in everyone and embodies it in life.

As keynote speaker at the third annual Black History Month Seminar, sponsored by the College of Pharmacy on February 28, the Fulbright scholar will pass on some of that inspiration to the MUSC community. The one-hour seminar begins at noon in Baruch Auditorium on the MUSC campus. It is free and open to the public.

“I want to share some of the things that I know now that I wish I had known when I was in pharmacy school,” said Just, whose career has been a fascinating journey. She heads to Uganda March 31 for a nine-month odyssey teaching pharmacology and foundation-building for a new pharmacy school. She'll also explore telemedicine in East Africa.

As for choosing a career in pharmacy, “I just happened into it. I was going to get a master’s degree in chemical engineering until a friend suggested that I consider pharmacy school at MUSC specifically.”

The next thing she knew, she had moved to Charleston, met her husband, started a family and was about to embark on a career in pharmacy.

But doubt crept in. “I asked myself, ‘Do I have the grit?’ My mother was disabled and I never knew my father, so I never had that role model in the home. One that would instill that 'get up, show up and work hard.'”

But she needn’t have worried. Today, Just works for PipelineRx, which offers a cloud-based pharmacy platform delivering clinical services from task-focused medication order review to outcomes-focused patient care. As regional director for PipelineRx’s Client Success Group, she travels extensively to consult with physicians, nurses, pharmacists and others across the health care spectrum.

Fortunately, between her faith and her family, that happy aura of inspiration has steadily grown. Soon, she will be impacting pharmacy in the heart of Africa at the newly-opened medical school at Uganda Christian University (UCU). This inspired path to UCU started as hopeful curiosity but depended on an impressive amount of resolve to turn obstacle after obstacle into step after step.

In October 2016, Just went to Uganda as part of a mission trip with her church. “I got into it not knowing what I’d be doing, how I could contribute,” she said. “In the first intro session, the medical school was never mentioned but I just had a feeling that I was going to help start a pharmacy school.”

In June 2017, she was encouraged to apply for a Fulbright grant to return to Uganda to teach second-year medical students the following year.

In March 2018, she found out she won the Fulbright grant. “I was honored but shocked, and wasn’t even sure that I could accept with a start date of Aug. 1,” she said. “My husband wasn’t going to be able to go and I realized I was not going to be able to get everything done for work in time to leave. At that time, returning to Uganda on Fulbright didn’t look possible.”

But there was hope, since the UCU medical school’s opening was postponed for a year. Just took a chance and contacted Fulbright. They granted her an 8-month postponement, allowing her to plan for April through December of 2019.

“Things started falling into place,” she said. “It encouraged me to continue to trust God with every detail.”

The United States Embassy in Uganda approved the new dates. PipelineRx agreed she could maintain her position while in Uganda, vanquishing any worry for possible job loss. The only thing her CEO, Brian Roberts requested is that she comes back with "vision and some big ideas."

Helping to start a pharmacy school in Uganda will require partnership with organizations in America, which is beginning to come together.

“LaDavia has great vision, great faith, and great ability,” said Philip D. Hall, dean of the MUSC College of Pharmacy. “It’s hard to picture a difficulty she can’t overcome. We’re proud of her accomplishments and believe she is the college’s first Fulbright scholar. Uganda will be in good hands.”

Obstacles remain. Figuring out child care, her husband’s career, coping with potentially parenting alone in a foreign country while adjusting to the demands of a new work environment. How will the Justs manage? She is not worried. She embraces each step of the way as all part of a plan in which she has absolute — and infectious — trust. 

“I believe things will work out according to God’s will. He has purpose not for just me, but for my entire family in this,” said the mother of three. “I will continue to trust Christ. He is guiding me along a very precise path. I’m excited to see what God has planned for the Just family.”