Leaders stand between No Longer and Not Yet.
During her 2018 keynote speech to students at Ambassador Leaders’ Medicine and Health Care Summit, Dr. Patrice Harris was President Elect of the American Medical Association, the oldest and most prestigious medical association in the United States with nearly 250,000 members. Given her leadership role, students were surprised to learn that Dr. Harris’ own role model growing up and inspiration for going into medicine was Dr. Marcus Welby, a fictional character from a TV show.
She told students that Dr. Welby taught her valuable lessons about seeing patients as whole people, recognizing that health care is but one piece of the larger puzzle that is a person’s life. She knew then that doctors not only had an obligation to treat patients—the best doctors care about and are leaders to their communities at large.
“Leaders are called to stand between the no longer and the not yet and intentionally make decisions that will bind, forge, move, and create history.”
Undoubtedly, these lessons shaped Dr. Harris’ view of what good medicine looks like, but she acknowledged that she couldn’t really see herself in Dr. Welby and, in fact, didn’t really see any examples of Black women as medical leaders when she started her own journey into the profession.
Surveying the diverse students in front of her, Dr. Harris’ message was simple: If you don’t see an example of your dream, you have to go be the example. That, she said, is what leadership is all about.
When she was inaugurated as President of the American Medical Association in 2019, Dr. Harris described further the vision of success she shared with our students. Speaking to her AMA colleagues, Dr. Harris said, “We can make a difference, and we do make a difference. Our formula for success? Community, teamwork, a broad perspective, professional allies and a willingness to lead.” Take a listen to her full speech below.
Like Dr. Harris, we believe in the power of leadership, teamwork and community as ways to drive positive change. That’s why students at the Medicine and Health Care Summit not only come together in teams to create and present a patient case study but also complete service learning with our partners at United Way. Our goal is for our students to see themselves both as future medical professionals and community leaders.
To close her inaugural address, Dr. Harris borrowed from a Mary Lou Anderson poem to note that leaders must frequently straddle the past (“the no longer”) and the future (“the not yet”) as they create change. In her poem, Anderson describes it as a “lonely place” to be, but Dr. Harris reminds us (and we agree!) that we are at our best when we learn, advocate and lead together, and when we do that, we aren’t ever really alone.
Ambassador Leaders had the opportunity to hear from Dr. Patrice Harris in person at the 2017 and 2018 Medicine and Health Care Summits at Johns Hopkins University. Learn more about Dr. Harris’ work by reading her bio and blog posts here.
By Corie Bales
Corie is the Academic Affairs Manager of Ambassador Leaders. As a lifelong educator and avid traveler, she believes in empowering students and teachers to learn and lead through experiential education.