Just after her economics lecture, and before her entrepreneurial project group meeting, Shequita Curby plants herself on a bench outside Harkness Hall and reflects on her warrior’s journey.
It’s a path that has taken her from her childhood home in the Northern Mariana Island of Saipan to military postings with the United States Air Force in Afghanistan, Qatar, Germany, and around the U.S. It also included a devastating heart attack in 2021 that ended her military career and left her struggling to regain her physical and cognitive abilities.
Her latest step in that journey is at Yale, where she is spending a transformative stint at the Warrior-Scholar Project’s summer boot camp for military veterans preparing for college. For two weeks, a cohort of vets live on campus, take classes taught by Yale faculty members, and acclimate to student life.
The Warrior-Scholar Project — founded at Yale in 2011 by alumni Christopher Howell ’14, Jesse Reising ’11, and Nick Rugoff ’11 — is running college preparatory boot camps at 20 university and college campuses around the country this summer. Since it was created, more than 2,250 student veterans have participated in a Warrior-Scholar Project boot camp or workshop.
“It’s going so much better, even, than I had hoped,” said Curby, 36, who lives in Las Vegas with her husband and daughter. “Being here on the Yale campus, living in the dorm and walking to classes, has felt like something out of a movie.”
Curby spoke with Yale News about her service career, her recovery, and her dreams for college and a career in finance. A condensed version of the conversation follows.
When did you join the U.S. Air Force — and what specialty training did you do?
Shequita Curby: I enlisted in January 2009, did basic training in San Antonio, and had my first posting at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.
I trained in health care services management, which is the backbone of any hospital. You’re handling admissions, medical records, information systems, readiness for deployment data. I thrive in structured situations, so it was great for me. Later, I moved into resource management and Uniform Business Office [UBO] management, dealing with insurance companies, billings, and collections. I just loved it. That’s where I discovered my interest in finance.
Did you get a chance to use these skills in your overseas deployments?
Curby: I did force protection on Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan, in 2011, which involved security at sites around the base. I did hospital administration work during my deployment to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, in 2013.
What were the circumstances surrounding your medical emergency a year ago?
Curby: I was stationed in Germany at the time. My husband and I were returning from a trip to Amsterdam to celebrate our anniversary, and we were in a train station. My husband said, “Let’s take the stairs,” but I wasn’t able to answer him. I started seizing and collapsed.
A train conductor, his name was Tim, and an American named Charlie, they and my husband did CPR on me, but I went approximately 30 minutes without consistent oxygen getting to my brain. We found out later that I’d had an artery tear that led to a SCAD [a spontaneous coronary artery dissection] — the kind of heart attack they call “the widow maker.”
I was in the hospital for two weeks and after that was two or three months of cardiac rehabilitation, seven months of neurological screenings, and speech therapy. My body had to reset; I had trouble talking, putting sentences together, walking. But I gradually made progress and I continue to build up my cardiac capacity.
It also meant you had to leave the military much earlier than you had expected. How was that adjustment, initially?
Curby: I just wanted to get back to myself. It’s very hard to accept something you don’t even have a precise memory of, like my heart attack and going to the hospital. It’s obviously real, but it doesn’t seem real.
I was deemed unfit for duty and given a medical retirement. For the first six months, I just tried to see where I would go from there. I felt scared to be alive, if that makes any sense. Everything can be taken from you, at any moment.
Finally, I put all of my military stuff away and decided I should go back to school, finish my bachelor’s degree, and do something in finance, which is what I love.
How did the Warrior-Scholar Project fit into your plan?
Curby: A friend of mine from the military told me about the Warrior-Scholar Project and I thought, “this is perfect.” I hadn’t been able to test my cognitive ability in a classroom environment yet, and I needed to see where I was.
I took an online WSP humanities program in December 2023. Especially at the beginning, I experienced a lot of headaches; I think part of it was screen fatigue, but another part of it was that my brain just wasn’t ready yet for processing that much information. It needed to be “stretched out.”
But it got me ready to take the next step. I took four classes at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas this spring, and I plan to take five classes in the fall — which is why I wanted to do the in-person boot camp.
How has this experience helped you?
Curby: It has boosted my confidence as a student. It’s a real shift; I am now embodying a new identity for myself, which is what I need to be successful in the fall.
And honestly? It’s really got me thinking about coming back to Yale for a graduate degree.
