Kerry completed her internal medicine residency and critical care fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She is now a physician specializing in critical care. Kerry has continued work in international health and has collaborated on projects in Haiti and Rwanda through the Harvard Medical School Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. She is also actively working on public sector partnerships in Uganda through Massachusetts General Hospital and MGH Global Health.
Seed Global Health
Active in global health for many years, in 2011 Kerry started the non-profit Seed Global Health which envisions a world where every country has the robust healthcare workforce it needs to address its health burdens. Seed's flagship program was the Global Health Service Partnership. a partnership with the Peace Corps. The Partnership sent health professionals abroad to work as medical and nursing educators and to help build capacity. Seed has helped send over 191 physician and nurse educators to train more than 16,000 health professionals in sub-Saharan Africa. The program is currently active in Malawi, Uganda, Eswatini, and Zambia. In 2010 Kerry wrote an op-ed on the idea of sending American health professionals to teach for The New York Times. She has also published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet on the topic. The program also partners with academic medical centers such as the Massachusetts General Hospital and MGH Global Health. In 2013, Kerry, as CEO was named a Draper Richards Kaplan Social Entrepreneur. In 2014, she was featured in Boston Magazines Power of Ideas for her work with the organization. Kerry is the Associate Director of Partnerships and Global Initiatives at MGH Global Health and spearheads the program in Global Public Policy and Social Change at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and serves on its faculty.
Personal life
On October 10, 2009 in Boston, Kerry married neurosurgeon Brian Vala Nahed, who specializes in brain tumors and spinal disorders. As a surgeon and scientist, Dr. Brian Nahed leads a research lab which aims to develop the first blood test for brain tumors. In 2012, she gave birth to their son and in 2015 to their daughter. She is a former member of the Board of Directors of Young Democrats of America and is a term member to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Advocacy
Kerry took a leave from her medical studies in order to campaign for her father's, then Senator John Kerry, presidential bid in 2004, even introducing him at that year's Democratic National Convention. She campaigned by herself and with her sister, mostly focusing on campaign stops at university campuses. She made speeches in support of her father and focused on health care issues and tuition costs for students, two Democratic campaign issues she felt personally attached to. She also appeared on the MTV Music Video Awards show in Miami where she joined George W. Bush's daughters Barbara and Jenna to encourage voting. Through her work with her father and her public health policy education, she has not ruled out running for political office in the future. She has also spoken at a number of venues around the US including Aspen Ideas Festival Millennium Campus Network Conferences, TedX Boston, San Diego State University, UCLA, APHA and other venues.
