How to Maximize Your Residency Application Through the Power of Personal Branding with Dr. Andrew Lee

Gianmarco Calderara:

Hello, and thanks for listening to Resonance podcast, a podcast run by medical and graduate students at Baylor College of Medicine, where we interview clinicians, faculty, and researchers about their work in an effort to promote health, education, and ingenuity. My name is Gianni Calderara. I am a fourth-year medical student at Baylor College of Medicine, and I'm going to be co-hosting this episode today with my co-student and one of my close friends, Ryan Sorensen.

Ryan Sorensen: 

Nice to join you today, Gianni.

Gianmarco Calderara:

Ryan is going to be leading us through a conversation with Dr. Andrew Lee. I'm just going to give a brief introduction to Dr Lee. So, Dr Lee is the Herb and Jean Lyman Centennial Chair in Ophthalmology, and he's also the founding Chairman of the Blanton Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology at Houston Methodist Hospital. He's also a professor of ophthalmology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, and an adjunct professor of ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas A&M, The University of Iowa, and the University of Buffalo. Dr. Lee has been an American Academy of Ophthalmology member for over 25 years. He has served in various leadership roles. He's also a past president and current chairman of the board of the North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society. He's authored over 500 peer-reviewed publications, has written a few textbooks, and has given a whole bunch of named lectures. He also has a very large YouTube presence with over 80,000 subscribers. So, Ryan introduced me to Dr Lee. Ryan, could you tell us a little bit about how you first met Dr. Lee and sort of how this podcast came about? 

Ryan Sorensen:

Yeah, Dr. Lee is one of my mentors. I'm interested in ophthalmology, and he's a neuro-ophthalmologist. I met him my first year of medical school, actually at an event that he was presenting on building our brand for residency applications, which is the

subject of our podcast today. And since then, I've been on multiple research projects with him and helped with his YouTube channel. It's really been a pleasure to get to work with him over the years, and I'm really grateful to have him as a mentor. 

Gianmarco Calderara:

Yeah, and like Ryan said, this episode is going to be all about preparing for residency applications, which are coming up later in the fall. Dr. Lee's going to be talking to us sort of about building our brand for residency and how we can sort of sell ourselves to programs and what we want our message to be, and how we can go about conveying that message in the best way possible. I'm excited to hear from him, and I think it'll be a good episode. So, without further ado, let’s hear from Dr Lee. 

Ryan Sorensen:

All right, let's get to it.

Gianmarco Calderara:

All right. Well, Dr Lee, thank you so much for being here and agreeing to do this with us. I was really excited to hear about this topic from Ryan because I know applications are kind of, you know, around the corner, and I'm very excited for my own personal learning and some strategies I'm going to get just from a personal point of view. So, thank you so much for being here and taking the time to do this with us. 

Dr. Lee:

Thanks for having me.

Ryan Sorensen:

Yeah, we're excited. We were just going over the introduction earlier, and I told Gianni that this is a really special opportunity for both of us just to sit down with you and get some insight into applying to residency programs. So, if you don't mind, we'll just get right into the questions. First, if you can just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what got you interested in ophthalmology and how you ended up in Houston.

Dr. Lee:

So, I'm from Charleston, West Virginia, but I went to the University of Virginia for medical school and college, and then I