WittKieffer Impactful Leaders Podcast

Discovering Comfort in Discomfort and Complexity: Gregory Johnson, M.D.

"You need to get comfortable being uncomfortable," Dr. Gregory Johnson, Chief Medical Officer for UnityPoint Health, says about leadership. Through discomfort comes growth.  
Dr. Johnson's career story is replete with occasions where he challenged himself and welcomed discomfort in order to learn and grow. As a family medicine physician (and the son of a doctor), bedside manner has always been important to Dr. Johnson. In the leadership suite, this means staying in touch with the needs of patients, engaging with and trusting clinicians to do their jobs well, and innovating in ways that truly benefit individuals and communities – including those many rural communities served by UnityPoint who can benefit from advances in, for example, virtual care, mobile clinics, and new technologies.  
In this Impactful Leaders Podcast episode with WittKieffer's Vinny Gossain, Dr. Johnson looks back on the reasons he got into medicine ("I was hooked" from an early age, he shares) and how he's grown as a leader as a way of impacting ever-larger numbers of people. "Leadership is complicated," he says, but it is more important than ever.   

Academic Medicine Dean Insights: Allison Brashear, M.D., M.B.A.

"Academic medicine is where everything comes together," says Allison Brashear, M.D., Vice President for Health Sciences and Dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo. "It's education, research, clinical care, and the community." Her passion for all of these pursuits has led Dr. Brashear to leadership roles of increasing responsibility. In a recent episode of WittKieffer's Academic Medicine Dean Insight Series, she reflects upon her career growth and future trajectory with Academic Medicine Practice Leader Kim Smith.   
Dr. Brashear cites the rapid pace of change as the most daunting challenge in academic medicine today. She mentions the impact of AI, evolving education curricula, and the dynamic research landscape as adding to the complexity leaders face. Successful change initiatives involve creating a sense of urgency, building a core team with a shared vision, and putting infrastructure in place to "help move the ball down the field." 
Dr. Brashear shares a wealth of advice for other deans. Each deanship is different, she says, but there are new and evolving skills required for success in the role. These include an understanding of finance, HR, and legal aspects of academic medicine. Dr. Brashear encourages future leaders to aim high and seize opportunities, knowing they don't have to go it alone – there is support from other leaders in the academic medicine community. "Always train to be ready," she says, "so that if the door opens you're ready to walk through it." 

Finding Fun and Fulfillment in Physician Leadership: Saju Joy, M.D.

With two degrees in engineering and an MBA to complement his M.D., Dr. Saju Joy brings a learning mentality to everything he does. A thirst for knowledge piqued his interest in becoming a physician (he's a maternal fetal medicine specialist) and it continues to drive him in his work today as CEO of The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Health Charleston Division, an organization of more than 13,000 people. 
"I didn't go looking for leadership," he says. "Quite honestly, leadership found me." Like any physician moving into senior leadership, Dr. Joy had to adapt to the increasing complexity of each new position, having to oversee numerous "petri dishes" of activity and ensure growth was happening in each and every one. He placed a premium on enjoying each new career direction. "When you're having fun with what you're doing, you do it so much better," he says.  
In this Impactful Leaders Podcast with WittKieffer's Vinny Gossain, Dr. Joy looks back at his eventful journey and what has led to his success even when leadership was not the primary goal. They discuss the importance of doing what you love so that "filling one's cup" happens organically and easily.  

Embracing the Past While Envisioning Tomorrow: Michael J. Goar

Michael J. Goar's upbringing as an orphan in South Korea who was adopted and moved to Minneapolis at age 12 continues to shape his worldview and guide his leadership today. Most importantly, he believes in the power of adaptability, collaboration, and transformation. Now, as President and CEO of Sisters of Charity Health System based in Cleveland, Goar may be facing his greatest challenge yet, helping to turn the Catholic organization from a traditional hospital-based clinical provider (whose roots date back to 1851) to one providing a range of social services to underserved communities.
"In order to survive in a traumatic setting, you need to be flexible," he says. "I have taken those learnings into my leadership style . . . you as a leader need to be flexible, knowing that every circumstance and organization is different."
While honoring the organization's history, Goar and colleagues are taking an entrepreneurial approach to the future, connecting with partners along the way who have a shared vision. It requires retaining the "muscle memory" of running hospitals while creating new muscles for collaborating and finding creative ways to address challenges with health, housing, education, and food insecurity for local residents.
In this Impactful Leaders Podcast, WittKieffer Senior Partner Adriane Willig speaks with Goar about how his childhood, faith, and leadership experiences continue to drive him to adapt and impact the lives of others. 

Finding Purpose in One's Past: Brenda Rodriguez

Long before she became a community health center CEO, Brenda Rodriguez knew from personal experience their critical importance to society. "I'm a patient," she says proudly. "More than half my life I was homeless or struggling in one way or another . . . but I always knew life can be better." For Rodriguez and her family, community health centers were a "stabilizing force" that provided high-quality, and culturally competent, care and services.
Those experiences guide her today as CEO of Lynn Community Health Center in Massachusetts. "I need to be more courageous, I need to be more bold," she says. "It's not often as a professional where there's this intersection between your personal journey . . .and your professional and career aspirations."
In this candid and colorful conversation with Julie Rosen, Principal and Leader of WittKieffer's Social Impact & Nonprofits Practice, Rodriguez recounts her own experiences with community health centers and how they have shaped her leadership style, combined with a background in business consulting that gives her an approach that is both analytical and inspirational. Whether working with her staff, leadership team, or community members, Rodriguez seeks to "activate their agency".
Near the end of the conversation, Rodriguez explains why "the fish rots from the head" is an unusual maxim that guides her work and that other leaders can heed as well.

Accelerating Physician Leader Impact: Andrew M. Ibrahim, M.D., MSc

As an accomplished surgeon, researcher, and architect, Andrew Ibrahim, M.D. has combined diverse passions into a career that is very much of his own design and making. And yet Dr. Ibrahim knows the critical role that mentors play in one's career and in developing physician leaders. As director of the University of Michigan's Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy (CHOP), he and colleagues have instituted formal mentoring programs – "Launch" teams for junior faculty and "Boost" teams for mid-career faculty – as part of efforts to normalize mentoring and, in fact, make it a leadership expectation. "That's been normalized in our culture," he tells WittKieffer's Michael Anderson, M.D. "You don't move into a role of influence or get control of resources until you have a track record of mentoring." 
Dr. Ibrahim admits to being "obsessed with unrealized potential" and thinks deeply and creatively about helping those around him to develop and grow. A core belief is to identify potential leaders early in their careers and to accelerate their attainment of vital skills and experience. Too often in academic medicine, he says, leaders move through formal channels of advancement which don't necessarily build the right skills at the right pace, or ultimately place individuals in their optimal roles.
In this latest episode of the Accelerating Physician Leader Impact series – part of WittKieffer's Impactful Leaders Podcast  – Drs. Ibrahim and Anderson explore the unique qualities of the leadership development program at Michigan's CHOP and their broad applicability. Such ideas can serve as a blueprint for other leaders and organizations to follow.

Secrets to Sustaining Leadership Success: Dr. Jean Ann Larson

Dr. Jean Ann Larson has a difficult job: helping already high-achieving people to be even better than they are. As Chief Leadership Development Officer at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System and Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Development at the UAB Heersink School of Medicine, Dr. Larson works daily with some of the institution's most accomplished leaders, from deans to chiefs to chairs to health system C-suite leaders. In lieu of "improving" or "fixing" these individuals, she sees her role as helping them understand that learning and growth should never really stop. "No matter where you are on your journey, you have to develop new skills," she says.
Dr. Larson's emphasis in her work is on sustaining leadership success, building upon leaders' past accomplishments to help them address new and unique challenges. In turn, this fosters sustained leadership excellence across an organization like UAB, excellence that persists even when individual leaders come and go. 
In this Impactful Leaders Podcast, Dr. Larson reflects with WittKieffer's Vinny Gossain upon how she arrived in her current role, the secret sauce to leadership development, and the lessons that can be applied within other organizations.

In Interim Leadership, "It's Not About Me": Jeff Shilling

Interim leadership is a career path many executives are taking, including those who have served as senior administrators in higher education. Jeff Shilling thought he would transition into full-time consulting work after he transitioned out of a full time role in advancement, but instead found an opportunity as an interim leader through WittKieffer. He then found that he enjoyed a new way to use his expertise to help organizations through leadership transitions. A good interim leader needs a few simple qualities, Shilling says: 
Being comfortable in your own skin, so you're not intimidated by a challenging new interim role; 
Humility and the maturity to know "It's not about me" in an interim role; 
Curiosity and being able to say, "Let me know how I can be helpful." 
 

Impact at Scale: Ned Olney

Soon after taking the reins of Crotched Mountain Foundation in 2019, CEO Ned Olney and the organization made the difficult decision to close the iconic New Hampshire school that had served kids with severe disabilities since the 1940s, but that was no longer financially viable. "If we don't have the school, then who are we, what's our identity?" Olney remembered thinking. "What are we moving to?"  
In this Impactful Leaders Podcast, Olney speaks with WittKieffer Consultant John Fazekas about Crotched Mountain and what other nonprofits can learn from its bold vision for change. Olney's experience with Crotched Mountain is inspiring, which is apropos: "Take every single opportunity to inspire the people you serve," he advises. "If you can't inspire them, you'll have a hard time leading." 

Academic Medicine Dean Insights: Said Ibrahim, M.D., MBA, MPH

Dr. Ibrahim's story is an inspiring one, starting as a boy on the border of Ethiopia and Somalia, coming to the U.S. as a college basketball recruit, and moving on to medical school and ascending into leadership roles through hard work and passion. It's important for aspiring physician leaders and deans to adopt a growth mindset, he maintains, especially in regard to grasping both the clinical and academic realms of medicine today.
 
His insights, shared with WittKieffer's Aaron Mitra, FACHE, and Clarence Braddock, M.D., are included in our Academic Medicine Dean Insights series (part of the Impactful Leaders podcast). Academic medicine today is a "team sport", Dr. Ibrahim believes. In this conversation, he explores his own formula for success and shares advice for others to find winning ways.