April 23, 2026

#36 - Elizabeth Jere

Show Notes

"Come as a visitor, not as a spy." -Zambian proverb

"Eliza" is better known as Beth Jere, who is cheered in her old Zambian village and the surrounding areas for good reason. She was the first American her village ever knew, and she stayed on--helping locally at first, then regionally. Wherever she found herself, she was on the front lines of the greatest lifesaving effort ever by the United States. An episode of clear contrasts: past success vs. current missteps...

Beth Jere attended Johns Hopkins University and credits an internship in Baltimore and a semester abroad in Kenya for opening her eyes to public health work in action. Following her community health work in Zambia, as a Peace Corps volunteer, she earned a Master's of Public Health degree at Johns Hopkins. For the following two decades, she lived in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, working for NGOs often funded by the US Government (note: the episode erroneously states that she was a USAID and CDC staffer). At the time of the second Trump Administration's stop-order, halting assistance work overseas, Beth was working as a global health writer for PACT.

She also oversees Jiranileo, the first food tourism platform in Zambia.