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Behind many success stories in the United States is a long road of effort, sacrifice, and setbacks. Whether they come from humble beginnings or have faced obstacles along the way, those who achieve their goals share a common trait: the persistence to keep going when the path gets hard.
This is the story of Shay Taylor-Allen, a 32-year-old woman that was born in Yale New Haven Hospital in 1993 and worked as a janitor there for about a decade, starting at age 18 in 2011. More than a decade later, she is returning as a doctor at the same hospital that saw her birth and growth.
In March of this year, she announced on her social media that she would complete her anesthesiology residency at Yale. The video of the moment, where she screams “I’m going to Yale” while jumping up and down, went viral on her TikTok account. “I still can’t believe it,” she added.
From janitor to medical student
Taylor-Allen said she had little guidance at school, and since no one in her family had gone to college, she wasn’t sure how to approach applying. So she applied for a few positions at Yale New Haven Hospital and landed the job as a janitor.
Her path changed when her mother developed serious breathing problems after a fire at the family home. Doctors struggled to find the cause, until Taylor-Allen emailed the hospital’s then-CEO, whose office she used to clean. The executive arranged new appointments, and her mother was finally diagnosed.
“Let me become that doctor that I felt like should have helped my mom,” she recalled thinking in an interview with CNBC Make It.
@shaytaylorallen #1 match and so happy to come back not as a janitor this time but as a doctor! #matchday #medstudent #doctorsoftiktok ♬ 7 years latch - favsoundds
The student debt of more than $590.000 that she owes
With the help of a mentor, Yale assistant professor Gena Foster, she reworked her application and was admitted to Howard in 2021. The effort came at a cost: between her undergraduate, master’s, and medical degrees, she has accumulated more than $590,000 in student debt.
She and her husband are betting that the financial strain of living on a combined $7,500 a month will have been worth getting Taylor-Allen to this new chapter, one in which she plans to grow into her new career, repay her debts and begin saving for her family’s future.
Her $88,000 starting salary as an anesthesiology resident at Yale combined with her husband’s VA benefits puts their household income at roughly $150,000 per year now.
The moment she went viral for getting into Yale New Haven Hospital
The full-circle moment has felt nothing short of “surreal.” The most important moment came when she received her new employee ID that says “doctor.”
“I was in these same hallways on break, studying as much as I [could], getting ready for exams, stressing out that I might not even make it to medical school,” she says. “I’m coming back as a different person.”
She hopes her experience will help her build a bridge between doctors and service workers, and inspire others. “If you work hard, you can get to where you want to be. I think I’m proof of that,” she told The Washington Post.