For Giving a Voice to Women Living With HIV

Judy Mill, ’96 MN, ’00 PhD, has always marched to her own rhythm. When people told her at age 22 that she should buy a house and settle down, not fly off to Africa for two years as a Cuso International volunteer, she paid them no mind. Years later, when friends questioned her family’s move to Zimbabwe to do clinical work with Peace Corps, while her son was in high school, she brushed off their concerns. In fact, “that turned out to be the best educational experience he’s ever had!” she recalls happily. And when colleagues worried that her international work might slow down her path to tenure, Mill was undeterred.

“I was more passionate about global health than I was about getting promoted or tenured,” recalls Mill, retired professor and Faculty of Nursing associate dean, who was recognized for that unyielding commitment to global public health with a 2026 University of Alberta Distinguished Alumni Award.

“I’m shocked,” Mill says humbly. “I couldn’t believe that what I’d done would put me in a position to even be considered for an award like this.”

Decades ago, Mill left high school with a desire to get a job and get on with living. “I was not initially interested in much education after high school,” she recalls, which made the Toronto General Hospital’s two-year diploma in nursing an ideal fit. It wasn’t long after, with two Cuso volunteer assignments — two years nursing in Zambia and another two years in Malawi — that her passion for public health was born, prompting the first of many returns to school.

After earning a degree in nursing at the University of Calgary, Mill began to hone her interest in communicable diseases — especially HIV — an area she would work in for the remainder of her career.

“One of the people who really helped change my path was Dr. Stan Houston,” Mill says. When she moved to Zimbabwe in 1992 for another two years in southern Africa, she recalls how Houston, a professor in the U of A’s School of Public Health, and the medical director of the Northern Alberta HIV Program for 30 years, encouraged her to connect with the Women and AIDS Support Network.

Volunteering with that group broadened Mill’s perspective on HIV and AIDS, and gave her a newfound motivation to focus her research on women’s experiences living with HIV. “I used to think, ‘Why don’t women just use condoms?’ But it’s not just about biology. There are all sorts of economic and cultural issues that impact women’s ability to protect themselves and, often, women do not have a voice.”

Driven to help give those women a voice, she once again returned to school, this time to the U of A for a master’s in nursing and then a PhD, supervised by Linda Ogilvie, ’93 PhD, who would become another mentor. Throughout that time, she partnered with communities in Ghana and closer to home, including Indigenous communities, to explore how the intersections of gender, race and culture influence women’s experiences of living with HIV.

Having completed her doctoral studies, Mill began teaching in the Faculty of Nursing and, over the years, accepted several roles in academic administration including associate dean of the global health office. She juggled that work with teaching and continued activism and research, partnering with Enoch Cree Nation on several projects — in recognition of which she was honoured with the sacred gift of an eagle feather by community member and fellow activist Ken Ward — and regularly returning to Africa both on her own and with student groups until her retirement.

Leaving the university has certainly not meant leaving her passions and her work behind. In fact, shortly after her retirement, she was hired by the American-based Partners in Health program for a year, to support the University of Rwanda in launching its first master of science in nursing program. She has also maintained her connections with the Faculty of Nursing, and shortly before the COVID pandemic, led a student group to Ghana. “I’ve heard from those students, ‘This experience changed my whole way of nursing’ and that is so rewarding — to know this experience I felt was so powerful was also so powerful for them.”

Mill’s commitment to public health even saw her renew her nursing licence during the pandemic in order to provide COVID immunizations. “As a public health nurse, that was a core part of what we did,” she says. “So I felt it was something I could easily do to help and I was happy to do it.”

These days, Mill is an active member of the Edmonton chapter of Grandmothers of Alberta for a New Generation (GANG), which raises funds to support sub-Saharan African grandmothers who are raising grandchildren orphaned by HIV and AIDS. “Our group has raised $1.5 million over 20 years,” she says with pride.

Looking back on her varied and adventurous career, Mill is grateful that her instincts to choose a different path — and to embrace the guidance of people she trusted like Houston and Ogilvie — have been validated by this alumni award.