On March 20, 2026, Shay Taylor-Allen matched with her first-choice residency program at Yale School of Medicine, according to Essence. She is now an anesthesiology resident at Yale New Haven Hospital, where she previously worked as a janitor. ABC News reported that she was expected to graduate from Howard University College of Medicine in May 2026 and join Yale’s Department of Anesthesiology later that year.
Education and the cost of training
The Washingtonian reports that Taylor-Allen enrolled at Southern Connecticut State University in 2013. Howard’s The Dig says she applied twice before being accepted in 2021; Essence says she enrolled at Howard that year, at age 28. The Washingtonian also reports that she completed anesthesiology rotations at Howard, the University of Michigan and Yale.
Taylor-Allen told CNBC that her undergraduate, master’s and medical degrees left her with more than $590,000 in student debt. She expects to earn between $350,000 and $700,000 annually after completing residency, CNBC reported.
Match and debt in context
The National Resident Matching Program published results for the 2026 Main Residency Match.
For comparison, the Association of American Medical Colleges reports that 70% of medical school graduates in 2025 had education debt, averaging $223,130 among those with debt. That figure includes premedical and medical education debt, so it is not directly comparable with Taylor-Allen’s reported debt across undergraduate, master’s and medical degrees.
Workforce representation
Black women account for 2.8% of physicians in the United States, according to a Lancet study cited in WDRB’s reporting. Separately, research available through the National Institutes of Health’s PMC archive found that Black women made up 4.5% of medical school enrollment in the 2021–2022 academic year; researchers described the share as relatively stagnant over time.
The experience that influenced her career choice
Taylor-Allen has said her mother’s illness helped lead her toward medicine. In an account reported by WDRB, Taylor-Allen said that while she was in college her mother became ill and doctors had not identified the cause. WDRB also reported that a doctor asked whether her mother had a history of mental illness. ABC News reported that Taylor-Allen connected her decision to pursue medicine with her mother’s illness.
Taylor-Allen researched health care disparities and contacted the hospital’s CEO about her mother’s care. Her mother was assigned a new care team and diagnosed with vocal cord dysfunction. Taylor-Allen has said that seeing her advocacy lead to a change in her mother’s care influenced her decision to become a doctor.
Taylor-Allen began working at Yale New Haven Hospital after high school. WDRB reports that her mother told her she needed to work or go to school. CNBC places her start at the hospital in 2011, when she was 18.
