MAGAZINE FALL 2026
Treating the System,
Not the Symptoms
From military service to dental hygiene to the MBA/MHA program, Christl Despois is pursuing a career dedicated to improving access to healthcare.
Christl Despois (MBA/MHA ’28) remembers the exact moment she decided to switch careers and return to graduate school.
She was working as a registered dental hygienist when a military veteran came in for his scheduled cleaning and mentioned he had a toothache. To diagnose the problem, he needed an x-ray, which his insurance wouldn’t cover.
Unable to pay for the x-ray and the subsequent procedure out-of-pocket, he made an appointment for six months later and left upset.
He was still in pain.
“What stayed with me wasn’t just his frustration, that’s completely understandable, but it was the tooth pain. Tooth pain is genuinely miserable to live with, and he wasn’t asking for anything unreasonable; he just wanted his tooth fixed. The care was available, the clinical need was clear, but the system made it difficult,” says Despois.
“That moment made me realize the access barriers were bigger than anything I could address chairside, and I wanted to understand the systems creating them.”
The care was available, the clinical need was clear, but the system made it difficult.— Christl Despois (MBA/MHA ’28)
MBA/MHA Provides Path
to Positive Change
With the goal of understanding the financial and operational aspects of the U.S. healthcare delivery system, she applied to Pitt’s MBA program.
A few weeks into the MBA program, Despois contacted the Master of Health Administration (MHA) program director about earning a joint degree.
“I recognized that if I genuinely wanted to improve access, I also needed a deeper understanding of healthcare systems, policy, and delivery models,” she says.
“The joint MBA/MHA program allows me to approach challenges from both strategic and clinical/healthcare perspectives, which I find important if I hope to create meaningful improvements in access to care.”
Despois sees the MBA and MHA as a powerful combination.
“The two degrees together give you the ability to sit at that intersection to ‘speak’ both languages fluently, which I think is where the real impact can happen,” says Despois.
Prior to being a registered dental hygienist, Despois spent six years in the Army as an animal care specialist. She’s found her military experience dovetails nicely with the MBA program.
“Depending on your rank, you’re touching on resource management, team development, decision-making under pressure, and operational planning,” says Despois.
“It may not look like corporate accounting on the surface, but the underlying concepts are very similar. When we cover statistical analysis, economics, or managerial coursework, I find myself drawing from my service experiences to contextualize what we’re learning.”
The military also taught her how to read a situation and know what type of leadership is needed for each different situation.
She’s learned that sometimes you lead from the front and other times it’s best to step back and let another team member take charge. She believes the military and corporate world have more in common than most people think; a lot of the same leadership philosophies exist, just under different names and acronyms.
From Military Service
to Business Leadership
Her Army experience gave her practical knowledge of leadership, resource management, teamwork, and decision-making — skills she now applies to her MBA/MHA studies.
A Deep-Seated Core
of Empathy
It’s not surprising that she returned to school to help improve the healthcare system.
As her experience as an animal care specialist illustrates, she takes a personal interest in those under her care.
Many of her relatives served in the Army, so shortly after high school Despois enlisted.
She grew up with birds, dogs and rodents as pets and built upon this love of animals by training to be a veterinary technician.
The training was extensive — nearly a year of both combat and veterinary sciences study — but when she started supporting and managing surgical care for Army animals at the Veterinary Medical Center Europe in Kaiserslautern, Germany, she knew the hard work was worth it.
That’s where she met a 12-year-old German Shepherd named Charly.
Charly, a patrol and explosives detection military working dog, was sent to the veterinary medical center for a vision evaluation.
When a vision impairment was discovered, he received a medical retirement and Despois quickly opened her heart and home to him.
“I adopted him so he could enjoy his retirement and have a good life,” she says.
Working with animals in the Army enabled her to see the tangible benefits of oral hygiene.
In addition to supporting sterilization, intubation and anesthesia, she provided dental cleanings for military working dogs.
This became one of the most rewarding parts of her job. Once their teeth were cleaned, the dogs’ handlers and care team noticed a difference in the animal’s behavior.
“I realized I valued the ability to improve the quality of life in a tangible way, and combined with my enjoyment of patient interaction, it led me to pursue a career in dental hygiene after completing my military service.”
She didn’t know this at the time, but her career path — animal care specialist in the Army, registered dental hygienist, now MBA/MHA student — sets her up to act upon her belief that, “people who are just trying to survive deserve systems that work for and not against them.”
Turning Compassion
into Action
Her studies and internship take up the majority of her time, yet she still finds ways to help others.
She volunteers at the Latino Community Center and contributes her talents to student organizations at both Pitt Business and the School of Public Health.
She has two more years of coursework before she graduates, yet she has already identified an issue she’d like to work on: expanding veterans’ dental eligibility to align more closely with the overall VA healthcare eligibility.
Currently, most veterans do not qualify for VA dental care unless their condition is service connected, they have a certain compensation rating, or they meet a narrow set of other criteria.
“This means a large portion of veterans who rely on the VA for their overall healthcare have no dental coverage through it at all, despite the well-documented connection between oral health and systemic health conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” she says.
She’s learned in her MHA courses that from a clinical and financial perspective, this change makes sense since untreated oral health issues drive up costs downstream across the whole system.
Despois knows change won’t happen overnight.
“One of the more sobering things this program has taught me is just how difficult meaningful change is to achieve at the legislative level. The number of stakeholders, competing interests, and procedural hurdles involved is genuinely humbling,” she says.
Creating Meaningful Change
“But I don’t think that’s a reason for cynicism; if anything, it’s clarified for me why people with the right training and intentions need to be at the table. I believe it’s worth fighting for, and I think there are enough people who believe that to make progress possible, even if it's slow.”
— Christl Despois (MBA/MHA ’28)