For about a decade, Shay Taylor-Allen walked the halls of Yale New Haven Hospital pushing a janitor’s cart. She mopped patient rooms, disinfected surfaces and emptied the trash.
Soon, she’ll walk the halls of the hospital again, this time wearing a white coat.
Taylor-Allen, 32, recently matched into an anesthesiology residency at Yale New Haven Hospital — where she spent most of her adult life working as part of the cleaning staff.
“I still can’t believe it,” she said. “It is surreal.”
Taylor-Allen’s connection to Yale New Haven Hospital started in October 1993, when she was born in the hospital’s maternity ward.
She grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, and was raised by a single mother of three. She graduated from Wilbur Cross High School in 2010 and was in the top 10 percent of her class, she said. The graduation rate at the school, 77 percent, is well below the state median.
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.
“My mom didn’t go to college, so she didn’t know anything about the application process or what I should do,” Taylor-Allen said.
She started thinking about getting a job instead.
“I was just eager to have an income so I could support myself,” she said. “I wanted to take care of myself.”
She applied for a few positions at Yale New Haven Hospital and landed a job as a janitor when she was 18.
“It was a lot of busy work,” she said.
But it was also rewarding, she said, because she enjoyed connecting with patients.
“I think a lot of patients come in with mistrust of doctors and nurses, so they build trust with service workers because they feel like they’re one of us,” Taylor-Allen said. “Sometimes they just needed somebody to talk to about anything else in the world other than their sickness. We got to build a relationship off of me just learning about who they are.”
But she was sure it would not be her long-term career.
“I knew I wanted to do something other than be a janitor, I just didn’t know what that was,” Taylor-Allen said.
She started college in 2013 at Southern Connecticut State University and continued her janitorial job full time. Her mother had become ill, so Taylor-Allen was also helping look after her younger brother.
Shortly before Taylor-Allen started college, her family home caught on fire, and for years after, her mother had difficulty breathing.
“She explained that it was like breathing through a straw,” Taylor-Allen said.
She repeatedly took her mother to Yale New Haven Hospital, and doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
“They would just write it off as mental illness,” Taylor-Allen said. “This was my first time learning about a health care disparity.”
She decided to email Marna P. Borgstrom, then the chief executive of Yale New Haven Hospital, as she had cleaned her office before. She knew the chances of getting a response were slim.
“She emailed me back within that day,” Taylor-Allen said, adding that Borgstrom arranged several appointments for Taylor-Allen’s mother with a new medical team, and they diagnosed her with vocal cord dysfunction, a condition that obstructs the airway.
“She advocated for my mom,” Taylor-Allen said of Borgstrom. “Seeing advocacy first-hand truly pushed me to want to do it as well.”
She decided to apply to medical school. When she told her college adviser her goal of becoming a doctor, “he looked at me and was like … ‘I just don’t see it for you,’” Taylor-Allen recalled him saying.
Taylor-Allen was undeterred. She got her master’s degree at Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University to bolster her science background — all while keeping her job as a janitor.
When it came time to apply to medical school in 2019, she was initially rejected from the more than 20 schools she applied to. That’s when she connected with Gena Foster, an assistant professor of medicine in hematology at Yale School of Medicine, and Foster became Taylor-Allen’s mentor.
“I remember talking to her and just being super impressed,” Foster said, explaining that she met Taylor-Allen through a mentorship website. “She’s so hardworking, she’s so smart, she’s so humble.”
Foster helped Taylor-Allen restructure her medical school application.
“It’s impossible for somebody to get into medical school and become a physician without mentorship,” Foster said. “It’s absolutely critical.”
Taylor-Allen was waitlisted at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., but eventually was accepted and began classes in 2021.
“It’s really amazing to see her come this far and to accomplish all of this,” Foster said. “I don’t know if anyone understands just how difficult it is to accomplish what she has accomplished and to come from what she has come from … it’s just extraordinary.”
During medical school, Taylor-Allen said she always hoped to return to New Haven and complete her residency at Yale. She did a rotation in anesthesia last November, and it solidified her desire to work there.
“That’s my home,” she said. “I definitely felt like that was the place for me to be.”
While Taylor-Allen was hopeful she would match at Yale, she said she was completely stunned when she got the news on Match Day, March 20 — when graduating medical students across the country learned where they will complete their residencies. A video of her opening the paper revealing her residency captures her elation.
“I’m going to Yale,” she screams, jumping up and down in her high heels. The video has nearly 7 million views on TikTok, and Today.com wrote about Taylor-Allen.
Foster said she is ecstatic that Taylor-Allen — who has become a mentor to several prospective medical students — is coming back to Yale.
“I still can’t really talk about it without tearing up,” Foster said. “She’s going to be my colleague. It’s so cool. I’m so excited.”
Shema Hobby, Taylor-Allen’s mother, said she is emotional, too, particularly because her daughter’s decision to become a doctor stemmed from her own challenges with health care.
“For her to be there and see how I was getting treated and for her now to want to continue to help other people … it really was a blessing to have her go that route,” Hobby said, noting that her daughter inspired her to go back to school and earn her associate’s degree. “I’m overjoyed to see what she’s done.”
Taylor-Allen said her past will shape how she approaches her job.
“I want to build a bridge between doctors and other service workers,” she said. “When I was there as a janitor, I felt like I couldn’t speak to the doctors … they were so untouchable.”
She said she hopes her story will motivate others to go after their own goals, even if they seem far-fetched.
“If you work hard,” Taylor-Allen said, “you can get to where you want to be. I think I’m proof of that.”
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