Shay Taylor, a graduating Howard University College of Medicine student, will soon return to the same Connecticut hospital where she once cleaned rooms, now as a physician.
By Sholnn Z. Freeman
(Source: The Dig at Howard University)
Shay Taylor once cleaned patient rooms and offices in a hospital. Next month, after graduating from the Howard University College of Medicine, she’ll return to that same hospital as a doctor.
In recent weeks, the Howard University medical student has been flooded with interview requests from major outlets including CNN, ABC, and The Washington Post. Her story has even captured global attention, with news programs from Brazil and Spain reaching out.
“It’s been actually insane,” Taylor said. “I can’t believe that not only our country loves the story, but kind of the whole world is receiving my story and they love it.”
The wave of media attention began last October when The Jennifer Hudson Show featured Taylor. Hudson’s team reached out after seeing the viral post, giving Taylor her first major platform.
“That was just amazing,” Taylor recalled. “I didn’t know my story was going to reach her eyes at all.”
Taylor, originally from New Haven, Connecticut, grew up rarely seeing Black doctors. She worked at Yale New Haven Hospital as a janitor for 10 years — cleaning patient rooms, bathrooms, and even the office of the hospital’s CEO. When her mother fell ill with a vocal cord dysfunction that doctors initially dismissed as mental illness, Taylor, then at Southern Connecticut State University, sought help from the CEO directly.
With the intervention, doctors finally diagnosed her mother’s condition. Taylor said that moment cemented her interest in medicine and her personal mission: to advocate for Black patients who are too often overlooked.
But the struggle, she said, was real, especially growing up in an environment where becoming a doctor wasn’t a dream many Black people made into reality.
“I grew up with my mom,” Taylor said. “She was a single mom at the time and my two brothers. I never grew up thinking I wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t even know this was a thing. We don’t see too many Black doctors in Connecticut.”
Taylor applied to medical school twice before being accepted to the Howard University College of Medicine in 2021. She said at first she didn’t know the process. She didn’t know she had to take the MCAT, or about the application cycle:
“It was just so much I didn’t know,” she said. “I had to learn a lot of things.”
In medical school, Taylor struggled with exams and took five years to graduate. But she credits Howard with transforming her, sharing how people showed up for her, especially her classmates.
“We become family at Howard,” Taylor said. “We want everybody to succeed. So when you see a classmate failing, it’s like, ‘hey, reach out to me, I can show you how this is done.’ Let me help you.”
“I came in as one person and leave as another,” she added. “Howard University instilled in me so much self-esteem.”
Now, Taylor is set to graduate in May during the university’s 2026 Commencement ceremony on The Yard. Her mother, brothers, aunt, and husband will be there.
And, in a stunning turn, she even matched into her specialty, anesthesia, at Yale New Haven Hospital, the very hospital where she was born, where she cleaned rooms, and where the then CEO, Marna Borgstrom, encouraged her to come back one day as a resident.
“It’ll be full circle,” Taylor said. “Being born there, being a janitor there for 10 years, and then being back there as a doctor.”
