“Quinnipiac played a major role in my career, and it isn't talked about enough in the headlines,” said Taylor-Allen. “It gave me the confidence to apply to medical school. Taking challenging classes and having professors who actually believed in me pushed me to keep going. It played a huge part in my story.”

Today, Taylor-Allen is a first-year anesthesiology resident at Yale New Haven Hospital, the same place where she started out as a janitor at age 18. On October 29, Taylor-Allen returned to the Mount Carmel Campus to speak with a First-Year Seminar class instructed by Greg Knott, associate vice president of advancement.

Knott said Taylor-Allen’s discussion offered a diverse group of Quinnipiac students in their first semester of college lessons in perseverance and purpose, while also helping them reframe how they view obstacles in their own lives.

“She’s currently an anesthesiology resident at Yale and took an unconventional path to get there. It’s interesting not only in terms of the challenges she took on, but also the adversity she faced along the way, and how those two meanings of ‘challenge’ intersect,” Knott said.

Taylor-Allen spent 10 years on the hospital’s janitorial staff. She continued working while undertaking undergraduate studies at Southern Connecticut State University a few years after earning her high school diploma.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life,” Taylor-Allen recalled. “It wasn’t until I was 22 that I figured out I wanted to become a doctor.”

She said her breakthrough decision was jumpstarted by events following a devastating house fire which left her mother with third-degree burns in her lungs and severe vocal cord dysfunction. The condition was misdiagnosed as mental illness for two years, despite the family’s call for further medical investigation.

At the time, Taylor-Allen was assigned to clean the CEO’s office at Yale New Haven Hospital.

“I used to empty her trash, and I got this bright idea to reach out to her because nobody was helping us,” said Taylor-Allen. “I just cold emailed her, ‘Hey, I’m your janitor, you’ve probably never met me before, but I really need somebody to help my mother, if there’s anything you can do.’ And within a week, they changed my mother’s staffing, and they found out that she had vocal cord dysfunction.”

That first-hand experience with healthcare disparities, combined with the bold step of advocating for her mother at the highest level, sparked Taylor-Allen’s passion to practice medicine.

“It was literally from there that I decided I wanted to help other people, because I know a lot of people in America — no matter if you’re white, Black, man or woman — deal with healthcare disparities in our country,” Taylor-Allen said.

After spending two years as an undergraduate on a general studies track without a clear direction, Taylor-Allen searched online to find out what degrees she needed to help her get into medical school. She became a biology major entering her junior year.

“For me, it was a long time coming. It took that incident with my mother and finding my voice,” she told the students. “I remember being around your age, not knowing what I was going to do with my life. The overarching theme I want to reflect to you is me finding my voice. I think that was the biggest thing that I did not know, especially during my college years.”

Despite being faced with several hurdles, she earned her bachelor’s degree in 2017.

“I didn’t have any mentorship at that time, and because I was working full time, helping to support my mom, and going to school, my GPA wasn’t the best. So that was just one of the obstacles I had to go through,” Taylor-Allen said.

When her academic advisor recommended pursuing a career other than medicine, Taylor-Allen said she only grew more determined.

“Once he told me that, I knew I still wanted to become a doctor, and I was going to do everything I could to become a doctor. That’s when I decided to apply at Quinnipiac for my master’s,” Taylor-Allen said. “I decided if I could show them that I could be extremely competitive and that I could get a good GPA while I got my master’s, then maybe I could get into medical school."

From the moment she began her studies at Quinnipiac in 2018, Taylor-Allen said she found both academic rigor and a supportive faculty that challenged her and believed in her potential.

“Quinnipiac’s master’s program was crucial in helping me get into medical school, especially with classes like microbiology and virology. My virology professor was amazing. The way he taught and empowered us to lead the class helped me learn so much,” Taylor-Allen said. “I did end up graduating with a 4.0 from Quinnpipac, and that’s when I decided that I could apply to medical school.”

As they determine their paths, Taylor-Allen advised the students to step outside their comfort zone by reaching out to make connections with people who can help with advice or mentorship.

“The biggest thing in life is learning how to put yourself out there as a person. It’s learning how to build those connections for the career that you want to go in,” Taylor-Allen said. “Learning to make those connections and learning to find mentorship changed my whole course to becoming a doctor.”

In May 2026, Taylor-Allen graduated from Howard University College of Medicine with her medical degree. Even in the white coat of her profession, and with MD embroidered next to her name, Taylor-Allen acknowledged she still fights moments of self-doubt.

“I walk into the doors and forget that I’m actually their doctor today and just imagine that I’m supposed to be pushing a cart and a bucket, because that’s what I did for 10 years before I started medical school,” Taylor-Allen said. “I try to remember that these people were once in my shoes. Everybody had to learn at one point, and I’m starting from the bottom just like everybody else. Where you start doesn’t always determine where you finish.”

After completing her residency, Taylor-Allen plans to pursue a fellowship in chronic pain management, practice in clinical settings, and launch a foundation in New Haven to mentor young students aspiring to medical careers.

She left her Quinnipiac audience with the message that believing in yourself is the first step on any journey.

“I would love for you to walk away knowing that you belong in every room that you walk into,” Taylor-Allen said.