Victoria B. Chou, Ph.D., '92. P'31: 2026 Foundress Society Inductee

Dr. Victoria Chou ’92 has spent her career caring for mothers and children in some of the world’s most under-resourced communities. Through all of it, she has never stopped caring for the school she calls home.

 

Victoria is a maternal and child health epidemiologist and an Associate Scientist in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Duke University in 1996, a master’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 2000, and her PhD in international health from the Bloomberg School in 2011. As a U.S. Fulbright Fellow, she did her doctoral research in rural Nepal. There she followed thousands of mothers and children to understand how young maternal age affects the health of women and their babies.

 

Her work has taken her around the world. She has partnered with organizations such as UNICEF, UNFPA, USAID, Gavi, and the Gates Foundation to help governments and global health leaders plan, prioritize, and evaluate programs that save the lives of women, newborns, and children. Today she supports two NIH-sponsored clinical research sites in Uganda that study HIV/AIDS. That work includes efforts to prevent transmission from mother to baby. She hopes it will give women living in poverty the chance at fuller lives, whether or not they live with HIV.

 

The same devotion to others has shaped Victoria’s years of service to NDP. As a trustee and vice chair of the Board of Trustees, she has been a trusted advisor at some of the most pivotal moments in the school’s history. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she served on NDP’s Medical Public Health Advisory Team, and her expertise helped the school make difficult decisions to keep its community safe and moving forward. She later helped shepherd the Board through the transition to a new Head of School. Most recently, she served as co-chair of the Common Ground Campaign, which brought to life the new Huffman Commons at the heart of campus, and she joined her sister, Jessie Chou ’90, and her daughter, Madeline Lafferty ’31, in making a family gift to the campaign.

 

Victoria has also helped welcome new generations of alumnae into the NDP family. As commencement speaker for the Class of 2019, she challenged the graduates to carry four words into the world: Remember, Gratitude, Balance, and Dream. She then gave each of them a stone engraved with those words. In 2022, NDP honored her with the Mother Caroline Friess Alumna of the Year Award. The award recognizes an alumna who lives the SSND belief in empowering women to create transformative change in the world.

 

Scientist, mother, wife, friend, and devoted daughter of Notre Dame Prep, Victoria Chou embodies the spirit of the School Sisters of Notre Dame. We are honored to welcome her into the Foundress Society.