SPRING 2022

Ignite Magazine

FEATURE STORY: EXEMPLARS OF LEADERSHIP

What Prepares a Person to Lead?

Is it life circumstances, life events, or a combination that’s different for everyone?

In the following profiles, nine NEOMED health care leaders at various stages of their careers tell their stories.

“Like a drumbeat.” That’s the steady repetition of the goal one physician heard in her home, where her mother dreamed of her daughters getting the education she had been denied and becoming physicians.

Then there’s the physician-scientist who eagerly earned multiple degrees from Ivy League schools and remembers with a smile that that her family often suggested that she learn to relax.

Whatever varied routes they took, the NEOMED graduates in this group (eight of the nine are alumni) were lifted and propelled by the University’s culture of creating transformational leaders.

With that mentorship and encouragement deep in their bones, they chose to intensify and broaden their impact by learning to lead a team — often in unknown areas and exciting ways they could never have envisioned when they were starting out.

Crystal Mackall

Finding therapies for children's cancer
The search for answers to help patients propels Dr. Mackall’s work at the Mackall Lab at Stanford, where she creates immunotherapies for children's cancers.
Frank Papay

Giving Someone a New Face
Dr. Papay led the surgical team that conducted America’s first face transplant at the Cleveland Clinic in 2008 and the world’s youngest complete facial transplant in 2015.
Michael De Georgia

Teaming with Engineers in the ICU
With engineers, Dr. De Georgia developed the Integrated Medical Environment (tIME), a system to help translate raw computer data into actionable information for patients.
Duane Taylor

Breaking Color Barriers
The first Black president of the American Academy of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery, wants more African American students in his field.
Serpil Erzurum

Growing through Lean Efficiencies
Managing the entire Cleveland Clinic research enterprise, including steering discoveries from the lab to the marketplace, she makes every dollar count.
Donald Malone Jr.

Having Tough Conversatons Earlier
The leader of all of the Cleveland Clinic’s hospitals across the state of Ohio says, “I tend to be calm as the situation gets more tense.”
Jaclyn Boyle

Recognizing Pharmacists as Doctors
Dr. Boyle helped persuade Ohio lawmakers to recognize pharmacists as providers – and to allow them to be reimbursed as such.
Princess Ogbogu

Thinking Locally, Acting Nationally
“It’s important to have a seat at the table where decisions are being made,” says the incoming chair of the American Board of Allergy and Immunology.
Jennifer Baccon

Cultivating Resilience
Her natural disposition equipped her to sit with the uncertainty imposed by COVID-19. So did earning a Master of Health Care Management degree from Harvard.