Inspirations and Insights Cleveland Clinic Women’s Professional Staff Association

Susan J. Rehm is Professor of Medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, Vice Chair of Infectious Disease, Executive Director of Physician Health, Associate Chief of Staff, and was an elected member of the Board of Governors at Cleveland Clinic. She is a fellow in the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) where she has served on the Board of Directors. She is a Board Certified Coach and is a core faculty member of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Excellence in Coaching and Mentoring. In this conversation, she shares her journey to Cleveland Clinic and how her long and storied career here has allowed her to transition to many different fulfilling and challenging roles.

Chair of the Department of Dermatology and Professor of Dermatology at Cleveland Clinic for over 18 years, Allison Vidimos, MD, joins Hadley Wood, MD (subbing for our regular hosts) for a conversation about her career and leadership as she she prepares for retirement at the end of 2023. With her signature candor, humor and humility, Allison talks of her competitive family of golfers, starting her professional life as a Pharmacist which then allowed her to fund her medical school education and shares stories of the fateful events that led to where she is today. A skilled surgeon, empathic physician and successful mentor and leader, she is a member of the Board of Directors at the American Board of Dermatology and the Ohio Dermatologic Association. She's an expert consultant to the United States Pharmacopia Compounding Committee and the lead author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, and has authored two textbooks.

Dr. Michelle Medina is currently the Associate Chief of Clinical Operations within Cleveland Clinic Community Health, overseeing practice operations and professional staff affairs across 3 primary care departments, Hospital Medicine, Medical Care at Home, Wellness, Functional Medicine and Center for Personalized Genomics. She has served in various leadership positions at Cleveland Clinic, among them as a clinical leader within the Quality Alliance (Cleveland Clinic’s clinically integrated network), pediatric champion of population health and as Department Chair of Primary Care Pediatrics. In this episode Dr. Medina speaks with me about her family life growing up in the Philippines and how her work in rural Alabama framed her understanding of how community context and systems influence the care we provide and continues to inform her work at Cleveland Clinic. A successful physician leader, she shares how liberating and empowering it is to lead with vulnerability and how vulnerability generates creative thinking and cohesive teams.

Dr. Zeina Nahleh is a breast oncologist and the Chair of the Department of Hematology-Oncology and Director of the Cleveland Clinic Florida Maroone Cancer Center. She has received numerous awards and distinctions and has authored over 50 articles and book chapters in the field of cancer and breast cancer research. Dr. Nahleh has a double board certified in Hematology and Medical Oncology. In our conversation today, Dr. Nahleh reflects on the power of hope, optimism and resiliency that have shaped her career, her leadership and her life. She was born and raised in Beirut, Lebabon amidst civil war and knew early on that she wanted to be a physician. In training, she realized her life experiences gave her great sensitivity and empathy which suited her to care for patients with cancer. She talks about how effective leadership in medicine and parenting benefits a teenager from the same skills of being approachable, building trust and connection and providing constructive feedback for ongoing growth and development.

Kendalle Cobb, MD, is a board-certified Family Physician at Cleveland Clinic with an interest in health maintenance and disease prevention and adolescent health. She is Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and is currently serving as an Associate Chief of Staff with a focus on recruitment and retention of physicians and scientists, particularly those traditionally underrepresented in medicine. Growing up in San Francisco, she studied ballet and when sidelined with an injury started thinking about other career options and ultimately went to medical school after receiving a BA in history from Harvard University. In this conversation, she talks about working with medical students, mentoring and supporting their challenges on their journeys to become doctors and the courage to ask for help and building a culture of psychological safety.

Lisa Yerian, MD is a trained pathologist and serves as Cleveland Clinic’s Chief Improvement Officer, where she directs, coordinates and evaluates improvement strategies, methods and implementation across the Cleveland Clinic enterprise. Since 2010, she and her team have been building a “culture of improvement” where every caregiver is capable and empowered to make improvements every day in how Cleveland Clinic delivers high quality, safe and affordable care for patients. In this conversation, she shares how her rural Ohio roots inform her passion for this work, and, she reflects on the steps to successfully changing an organizational culture and how she personally “borrowed courage” to move her ideas forward