Carving a Path to Leadership: Strategies and Interventions

Leadership is most effective when it reflects the community that it serves. The efficacy, innovation, and outcomes of academic medicine are severely limited where there is a lack of women in leadership, and particularly women of color. WOC face unique challenges to both rising the ranks to leadership, as well as thriving in these positions, due to both systemic and individual biases. If our community is to diversify and adapt our current leadership structure, we must amplify efforts to both recruit and nurture women of color, whether they are an emerging voice or senior talent. While there is much focus on diversifying and adapting current leadership structures in academic medicine, some may say that there is little movement. 

Our Women of Color and Intersectionality webinar series kicks off with an inaugural conversation on “Carving a Path to Leadership.” This live event will explore interventions and strategies immediately needed to support, develop, and sponsor women of color from leaving and thriving in the ranks of leadership in academic medicine. Gleaning insights from current chairs and deans, as well as covering the data on WOC in leadership, this webinar will kick-start real dialogue about our current approaches and needed changes to make changes in the leadership of academic medicine. 

Learning Objectives:

  1. Explore the data related to women of color in leadership positions in academic medicine
  2. Elevate stories from women of color in leadership to understand carving a path to leadership, leadership strategies, and how to avoid pitfalls
  3. Engage with one another to share strategies to support and develop women of color into leadership positions

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Siobhan Wescott, M.D., M.P.H.

Assistant Director, Indians Into Medicine Program; Assistant Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine

University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health

Siobhan Westcott, MD, MPH, a public health physician, serves as immediate past chair and is the Association of American Indian Physicians representative of the Minority Affairs Section Governing Council for the 2019-2022 term.  She also serves on the AAIP board of directors.

The MAS is a member interest group within the AMA dedicated to addressing the issues and concerns of underrepresented minority physicians and improving the health of minority populations.

Dr. Wescott, former vice chair of the Minority Affairs Section, was elected chair of the section for the 2019-2020 year.

Archana Chatterjee, MD, PhD

Dean, Vice President for Medical Affairs

Chicago Medical School; Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science

As of April 2020, Dr. Archana Chatterjee is Dean of the Chicago Medical School and Vice President for Medical Affairs at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago, IL. For the previous 7 years, she served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development at the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine (USD SSOM), Sioux Falls, SD. She has spent nearly 12 years as a leader in Faculty Affairs/Faculty Development (FA/FD), initially at Creighton University School of Medicine, and later at USD SSOM.

Dr. Chatterjee has been elected/selected to serve on several national Advisory Boards and Committees including the Steering Committee of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Group on Faculty Affairs (GFA). She is currently serving as Past Chair of the AAMC Group on Women in Medicine and Science. One of her most significant contributions to the GFA has been her leadership of the History of the GFA Project through which she created a PPT of the history of the formation of the GFA, its administrative structure, accomplishments, and plans for the future; Conducted interviews with GFA leaders to obtain their perspectives on the value the group brings to the AAMC and its member medical schools; Developed a poster and booklet that could be utilized in a number of venues by diverse individuals such as the office-bearers, staff and other members of the GFA.

Mentorship and sponsorship of faculty and learners has been a hallmark of Dr. Chatterjee’s entire thirty- year career in academic medicine. Through her untiring efforts at guiding, promoting and encouraging faculty and learners, she has impacted the careers of numerous leaders, faculty members, fellows, residents and students, not only at her home institutions, but nationally and internationally. In addition, she has focused some of her scholarly effort on collaborative projects related to the field of FA/FD, participating in presentations at national conferences and publishing her work in high-impact, peer reviewed journals. Details of her leadership, mentoring and scholarly activities related to FA/FD may be found in her CV.

Trained as a pediatric infectious disease specialist, Dr. Chatterjee has practiced in her field for over 20 years, conducted over 120 clinical trials, published over 90 peer-reviewed articles, 26 invited review articles, 24 book chapters and one book. She serves as a reviewer for 35 journals. In the past 20 years, Dr. Chatterjee has delivered over 700 lectures and 175 scientific presentations at various international, national, regional and local venues. She has served as the course director for over 30 CME programs, given over 55 media interviews and published 25 newspaper articles.

Andrea Hayes-Jordan, MD

Chief, Division of General Pediatric Surgery; Byah Thomason Doxey-Sanford Doxey Distinguished Professor

University of North Carolina School of Medicine

Dr. Andrea Hayes Jordan is a professor of pediatric surgery and surgical oncology at the University of North Carolina Children’s Hospital. She is the Surgeon-in-Chief of the UNC Children’s hospital and the division chief of pediatric surgery at UNC. Dr. Hayes-Jordan has a basic science laboratory which focuses on rare sarcomas and also maintains a clinical research efforts. She specializes in refractory and resistant tumors and children and specifically soft tissue sarcomas and children. Her patient’s request her services from around the world because of the rare diseases she investigates. She was previously the section chief of pediatric surgery at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.

She was born in Los Angeles California 1965 and moved to Dartmouth College to pursue her secondary education. She continued at Dartmouth medical school. She then moved back to California to complete her residency program at the University of California Davis East Bay, under the tutelage of Dr. Claude Organ Jr. MD. She completed a molecular biology fellowship at the University of California San Francisco. She then went on to complete a pediatric surgical oncology fellowship at the St. Jude’s children’s research Hospital in Memphis Tennessee, then a pediatric surgery fellowship at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children. She also completed a special fellowship in melanoma and sarcoma at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

She developed the first orthotropic xenograft model of metastatic Ewing’s sarcoma. She simultaneously conducted clinical research and completed the first cytoreductive surgery and hyper-thermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy HIPEC, for children with sarcomatosis. She completed a phase I trial and established the safe dose of chemotherapy to be delivered in HIPEC.

She has continued to influence the field of sarcoma and sarcomatosis by amassing the largest number of desmoplastic small round cell tumor DSRCT, patients at any one hospital and by any one surgeon. DSRCT is a rare disease for which she has improved a survival from 30% to 60% based on complete removal of 100s of intra-abdominal tumor implants and HIPEC. She continues to receive philanthropic funding for her unique research.

Dr. Hayes-Jordan has served on the executive committee of the children’s oncology group sarcoma community for the past 10 years this position is shared by only 2 other pediatric surgeons in the country. She has earned membership into the American Surgical Association and has served as chair of the cancer committee for the American Pediatric Surgical Association. She has also been selected to the pediatric disease query PDQ, a national committee that vets every publication on pediatric cancer and summarizes it on the national Institute of health website. She has also served as the program chair for the Society of black academic surgeons and is a governor of the American College of surgeons.

She is nationally and internationally known for her work pioneering an operation known as HIPEC for children.

Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, MD

Professor and Chair, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio

Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez is an accomplished academic Physiatrist and Professor and Chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio. She previously was the Medical Director of the Brain Injury and Stroke Program at a top three US News and World Report Best Hospital for Rehabilitation.

Dr. Gutierrez grew up in South Texas, then moved to Houston where she earned her undergraduate degree at Rice University, her medical degree at Baylor College of Medicine, and completed her PM&R residency training at the Baylor College of Medicine-UT Houston Rehabilitation Alliance. She excitedly moved to San Antonio to lead the distinguished Department of Rehabilitation Medicine in 2020. Her area of clinical expertise is the care of patients with traumatic brain injury, stroke rehabilitation, and interventional spasticity management. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has developed a Post-COVID Recovery Clinic to aid in the rehabilitative recovery of patients with functional, mobility, and cognitive deficits after infection with coronavirus.

Mary J Owen, MD, Tlingit

President, Association of American Indian Physicians Director, Center of American Indian and Minority Health Assistant Professor, Dept. of Family Medicine and Biobehavioral Health

University of Minnesota Medical School

Dr. Mary Owen is a member of the Tlingit nation. She graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School and North Memorial Family Practice Residency Program before returning home to work for her tribal community in Juneau, Alaska. After eleven years of full-scope family medicine, she returned to the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth in 2014, as the Director of the Center of American Indian and Minority Health (CAIMH). Her work includes: developing and managing programs to increase the numbers of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) students entering medical careers, outreaching to local and national Native leaders to ensure University of Minnesota Medical School remain in tune with AIAN health care and education needs, developing an AIAN track for all students interested in providing healthcare to AIAN communities and developing research efforts to address AIAN health disparities. She continues to provide clinical care at the Center of American Indian Resources in Duluth and is the current President of the Association of American Indian Physicians.

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