Recruiting new leaders

This past week I went to the New Academic Leader Onboarding session at the University of Washington main campus where I had the chance to meet with many new leaders across multiple departments and different schools within UW. 

I learned about some new resources — Husky Assist, for example, which is a new mobile response team that provides on-site behavioral health support for students, faculty and staff in crisis on the UW campus in Seattle — and I was provided a much-needed reminder that leaders in completely different spaces often have similar challenges and that we are never alone in this journey. 

Speaking of leaders, we are in the process of searching for many new leaders in the UW DOM and I encourage many of you to apply and join our team. Choosing the right leaders is one of the most important things any large academic department can do, and we have plans to expand our wonderful already-existing team. 

Active searches

Here are some updates on the active searches. The cardiology division head search is well underway and approaching the finalist stage shortly. Allergy/Infectious Diseases is actively searching for a new permanent division head, and we thank Tom Hawn for recently stepping into the interim DH role to fill the big shoes of the prior DH Anna Wald.

We also recently opened the internal search for the new Associate Chair of DEIB. Many divisions have launched or will soon launch a search for their Associate Division Head of Clinical Affairs, and I encourage anyone with clinical operations or clinical strategy experience to apply.  

Leadership development

Coincidentally I also met with Giana Davidson this week, the Interim Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs for UW Medicine and was frankly blown away by the multitude of resources they have in the form of leadership workshops and formal professional development courses including a Rising Leaders Course  for newer leaders. 

In that context, if you are contemplating a leadership role in the UW DOM and have a bit of impostor syndrome (like many of us do), I would encourage you to apply and we will work with every new leader on a personalized leadership development program in collaboration with the Office of Faculty Affairs and our DOM Associate Chair for Faculty Affairs Cynthia Ko. I have no doubt that any future leader in the DOM will enjoy working alongside our amazing DOM executive leadership team. 

Hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend and as always a huge thank you to those of you who worked clinically.

PS: We went to LA for a quick family weekend to celebrate my mom's 80th birthday with a traditional Chinese banquet. She loves my blog and now she gets to be in it!