February 28, 2025
By Matt Crouch
AUBURN, Alabama - While growing up, there were two consistent presences in Dr. Takova Wallace-Gay’s home: Family and Healthcare.
Surrounded by health care providers, the passion and drive to help others was instilled at an early age. As she progressed into her education and career, another calling came on in mentoring students and helping the underserved in her community, two roles she now has the opportunity to take on as an associate professor at The University of Texas at Tyler School of Medicine and Fisch College of Pharmacy.
Recognizing her efforts, Wallace-Gay was selected as a recipient of the Auburn Alumni Association’s 20 Under 40, an award established to recognize members of the Auburn Family for extraordinary accomplishments, significant professional achievements and distinguished service to others. She was honored at a ceremony in November and also had the opportunity to be recognized on the field on Jordan-Hare Stadium, along with the other 2024 recipients.
“I was I was really surprised, humbled and very excited,” said Wallace-Gay. “The College of Pharmacy faculty and staff not only supported me while I was here, but they've been very supportive, since I've been gone and it meant a lot to me knowing Dr. Kimberly Braxton Lloyd nominated me for the award and just the impact that she had on me while I was here.
“I'm just, blessed and excited to be among the names mentioned and I'm very grateful to my pharmacy village for thinking of me and nominating me.”
Coming from a mother who is a nurse, a sister who is a veterinarian and a pharmacist aunt, HCOP Class of 1980 alum Patricia May, healthcare was in her blood. Her aunt Patricia had two sons and treated young Takova like a daughter, sometimes taking her to work with her.
“She would take me to work with her sometimes and I enjoyed going to work with her,” said Wallace-Gay. “So, I settled pretty early on the fact that I wanted to be a pharmacist just for those reasons: family and healthcare.”
Her path to pharmacy continued just down U.S. Highway 280 in Childersburg where she got her first position in a pharmacy while in high school, working under HCOP aums Bill Crew and Royce Warren. First as a cashier and then as a pharmacy technician, she continued working there as she started college, pursuing a chemistry degree at Tuskegee University.
Making the move to Auburn for pharmacy school, she was able to get involved with several student organizations, but the motto of serving the underserved by the Student National Pharmaceutical Association (SNPhA) spoke to her and inspired her to get more involved.
“We were able to go out and do a lot of things early on in our pharmacy matriculation that was allowing us to serve the community and do things that were very pharmacy-focused,” said Wallace-Gay. “I was also able to go out and just experience that side of pharmacy as a student pharmacist and so that was really impactful.”
That experience and impact of the experiential and interprofessional education stayed with Wallace-Gay as she transitioned to academia. The opportunity to help others while teaching and mentoring gave her the best of both worlds. She joined UT Tyler in 2016, just a year after the college of pharmacy enrolled its first students, giving her an opportunity forge her own path and develop new ways to educate students and improve health outcomes.
“I could have gone someplace established where they had their own programs and processes in place,” said Wallace-Gay. “Here, I could kind of set my own path and I have been able to do that here.”
Part of setting her own path is the creation of Under the Bridge, an interprofessional clinic that assists underserved members of the community. After seeing the need in the community, Wallace-Gay started the effort was students from the SNPhA chapter she advises, but over time it has grown to include students from a variety of health care disciplines. Her passion for the work is also evidenced in her role as Director of Interprofessional Education for the School of Medicine and chair of the university IPE committee at UT Tyler.
“Seeing the students in their experiential and extracurricular environments is really important to me,” said Wallace-Gay. “The classroom, they need that, they have to have that. But, I think the biggest and most impactful thing for me is seeing them out in the community serving.”
For her efforts, she was also recognized by the Texas Pharmacy Association with the Bowl of Hygeia. Given by each state, the award recognizes a pharmacist who continually has demonstrated professional excellence and made significant public service contributions to their communities.
A recognized leader for her outstanding work in the profession, Wallace-Gay is another leader in a long legacy of Auburn Pharmacy leaders. Holding leadership positions within SNPhA, pharmacy student council, Phi Delta Chi and others, she was able to hone her leadership skills and now play a vital role in educating a new generation of health care providers.
“I was able to be in certain executive committee meetings with the dean and with other administration and hearing those conversations and understanding what that is like really solidified my path into academia,” said Wallace-Gay. “I went into it already kind of understanding some of the ins and outs of academic pharmacy and just pharmacy in general. I definitely think it helped to catalyze my path into leadership roles.”
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Auburn University's Harrison College of Pharmacy is ranked among the top 20 percent of all colleges of pharmacy in the United States, according to U.S. News & World Report. Fully accredited by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), the College offers doctoral degrees in pharmacy (Pharm.D.) and pharmaceutical sciences (Ph.D.) while also offering a master's in pharmaceutical sciences and a bachelor’s in drug and biopharmaceutical sciences. The College’s commitment to world-class scholarship and interdisciplinary research speaks to Auburn’s overarching Carnegie R1 designation that places Auburn among the top 100 doctoral research universities in the nation. For more information about the College, please call 334.844.8348 or visit http://pharmacy.auburn.edu.