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Today’s podcast guest is Amy S. Gottlieb, MD, FACP. Dr. Gottlieb is Chief Faculty Development Officer, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, and Professor of Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology at University of Massachusetts Medical School-Baystate in Springfield, Mass.
Circuitous journeys in faculty development are commonplace. It’s getting to the point that we might be able to piece together a mighty interesting book about the various ways our podcast guests have gotten to where they’re at in the career.
We continue to learn about new and unique ways folks started their careers before finding academic medicine and faculty affairs. Today’s interview was the first time I’ve met someone in our space who comes from corporate finance. It speaks volumes to the diversity of our faculty’s backgrounds and how it all lends itself to creativity, new ideas, etc.
The importance of getting ideas from other fields cannot ever be overstated. This point is underscored through some strong examples on today’s podcast.
Dr. Gottlieb started out in corporate finance but as you’ll learn on today’s episode her passion for helping underserved women led her to a career in medicine.
While reading business literature avidly in the early stages of her medical career she noticed there was a lot of talk about tapping the unused talent of women, and some ways to do that through a concept which at the time was new and called, “sponsorships.”
Her first big jump into faculty development and affairs came in 2012 when she had the opportunity to establish a nationwide sponsorship initiative. This initiative had the goal of supporting the advancement of female junior faculty.
This experience convinced her she should be more involved with academic affairs and faculty development.
“The terrain was ripe for some innovation around how we can harness the talent of our diverse workforce. In particular, our women, who represent at least one half of our pipeline for medicine,” Dr. Gottlieb said.
The importance of making an impact with our work both nationally, internationally and locally is discussed around the 15-minute mark of today’s episode. As you’ll learn from her story, while at Brown University, Dr. Gottlieb found a way to make an impact at the national level and then balance that out with her contributions to the local community within southern New England.
I believe our conversation highlights the importance (and value) of working with national societies. We also chat about the importance of bringing what we learn at our national societies into the work we do at our local institutions.
Further ideas are exchanged in this podcast, such as getting the business-side of operations at the same table with our faculty affairs personnel so we can each learn from each other.
Generally speaking, we’re not taking enough advantage of having both faculty affairs and business personnel learn from each other in support of our institutions. I firmly believe this is a missed opportunity at many institutions.
Please make sure to listen to the entire conversation, via the embedded player above. If you have any feedback on today’s episode, or any aspect of the Faculty Factory project, please make sure to visit our Contact Us page and reach out to us!