I am Harsh Trivedi, President and CEO for Shepard Pratt, and I'm going to be moderating this session. I do like to start on time, and so we're going to do that. Thank you all for coming. There's nothing like, you know how powerful people are when you get the coveted Saturday morning 8 a.m. slot. But I think you're in for a treat. So what we're going to do is we actually have myself, plus three additional panelists, we're going to be talking about leadership, and then we're going to have kind of an open discussion. And so I thought maybe what would be interesting, welcome Saul, we were just about to finish. Come on in, all right. So what I will just say is the wonderful part about leadership and also APA as well is when you talk about the folks who are going to be giving the talks, I think we've all known each other for at least two decades, if not more. You will find that it's a pretty small community, and it's wonderful to work with each other. So with that, what I will say is we each have kind of some comments about leadership, and what I thought I would do is just start off. I'll tell you a little bit by myself. This is true tales of leadership in clinical organized and academic psychiatry. What I would just say is that the world of leadership has changed a lot over the last few years, but more importantly, leadership can look very different depending on what it is that you're leading. And so we're going to give you, I think, probably four different case examples in terms of each of our lives, but then talk about what that means in terms of how do you generalize those findings or think about what we do. So with that, let me just bring up, all right. So I am the president and CEO for Shepherd Pratt. I will just say because it's the APA, I have nothing to disclose, as I will not be talking about any substances or compounds or anything else, nothing of a marketing nature as well. Lots of words, right? And if I talk about my journey, and I think this is the part that's kind of interesting is, would I have ever said that I would be the CEO of a health system ever in my career? The answer is no. I grew up actually right here in New York City. I went to public schools here. I went to a wonderful seven-year med program here. And really the highlight, I would say, was becoming a physician. At the most in residency, it was becoming a training director. And then life happens. So what I would say for me is a few different things. We're going to start off with, well, how did I get to where I am? So aside from all the different things that are on the screen there, I think one of the things that is particularly important is the fact that you see this little thing right here, which is I had the wonderful opportunity during my psychiatry residency to be the APA Spurlock Fellow. And so I actually got to spend time working in the U.S. Senate, working on healthcare policy. In that experience, I will say I was just there for a few months. Had a wonderful senator that I worked with, Senator Jack Reed. And about two weeks before I got to the office, the healthcare legislative assistant went on maternity leave early. So I was then all of a sudden the only healthcare person in the office. And I became the good doctor that then got to give feedback about Ryan White reauthorization. Every piece of healthcare legislation in the office, meeting with every constituent. And then he also said, hey, you're in the office. Is there anything you're passionate about? What do you want to write about? Write a bill, and I will drop it in Congress. What many of you may know or remember is there's this wonderful thing called the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act. So that's what I got to work on. I was actually the one in the office that did that work. Worked for a Democratic senator. As a Republican senator, Smith, whose adoptive son had died by suicide. Passed Congress, signed into law by the president. That one bill has provided over $150 million for suicide prevention in kids, building of college mental health centers. As a physician, I would say, that one bill will do more good than anything I will do in the rest of my career. Period. So how do I get to leadership? Basically, what I figured out is it's really about impact for me. And how can I impact populations of people? And so throughout my career, what I've really focused on is how do I leave each room better than how I found it? And how do I make an impact? So with that, I'm not going to get into all the other honorifics or who I am. But I guess what I will just say is, this has never been more true, which is the time is always right to do what is right. And I would say, if there really is a perspective of what can we do, how should we do it, it holds true today. Just turn on the news, and you will see many opportunities where there is the opportunity to do what's right. I bring that up because when we say, well, a lot of people say, well, what's your leadership style? What do you think about? And I would say, for me, it very much is one where I think about this concept called authentic leadership. It's really hard in today's day and age to be anything but yourself. And so what do I mean by that? You have to have, and this is my way of leading, is you have to lead with high integrity. From the time that literally my kids were about three years old, it's the one question I keep on asking them. What's the definition of integrity? Doing the right thing even when no one is watching. And if you can do that, and you know you're doing the right thing, it's not that hard to waver from the right path. And I say that right now because I think in today's day and age, it becomes harder and harder to figure out the what is the right thing. So when I talk about authentic leadership, it is internally how do I, how am I committed to bettering myself? How do I cultivate self-awareness across my team? How do we work in a very disciplined manner? And so for my entire team, what I will just say is, I am incredibly boring in the sense that if you work with me, you will know exactly what I will do every single time, and that reliability provides stability. We are very much mission driven. You'll get to hear a little bit about our mission. And why we do what we do is because at the end of the day, people want to feel like they're making a difference, and that inspires faith. Faith at times where things are truly hard and difficult to achieve, and yet we accomplish what's unachievable each day. So in this leadership journey, I think the biggest thing that I would just say is, for me, it's about how do you stay authentically true to who you are? How do you get people to trust you? And I think as a physician, as a psychiatrist, what I would just say is, we are entrusted to be involved in people's lives at their most difficult points. We get to see people when they're imminently suicidal, when they're dealing with a horrible issue with a family member. We're humbled, and I think for me, it's just humbling to be trusted as that caregiver, but more importantly, how do we actually drive to real outcomes that make a difference? So with that, people say, well, what's your framework? What do you recommend? And for me, I would say in many ways, the most important thing that I've read along the way, and very much why I do leadership, is because I'm interested in building high-performing teams. When I think about high-performing teams, I think about Coach Wooden, UCLA basketball coach, has written one of the best books on leadership that I know. It's actually called On Leadership. And essentially, what he basically says is, I'm not gonna talk to you about winning or losing. Cuz I think that's a byproduct of preparation. I would much rather be focused on the process of becoming the best team that we're capable of becoming. And you're gonna hear a little bit about my team. Some of them are in the audience today. I promise you, we will run circles around the competition. But that's not because we wanna get to a specific thing. It's because we wanna actually put out the best possible thing we can possibly do. If you don't worry about winning and losing, but you do your best, I promise you things do work out, and they work out really well. There's not a lot I can cover in ten minutes, but what I would just say is, there's this concept of the pyramid of success. And if you look at the bottom level, I will just say all the time, when I recruit people, I'm not recruiting people for a position. I'm recruiting a person to join my team. That role is gonna change many times over in the course of their career. I will also say, I can't train someone to be a good person. I can't teach them morality and ethics. I can't teach integrity. But if they have those things, from a skills perspective, I can teach them pretty much anything. And so that bottom part, I will just say, industriousness, the ability to take on mounds of work and get things done. To do that in a collaborative relationship, where you have the ability to form friendships. And I'll just say, loyalty, where we know we have each other's back through thick or thin. The fact that we can do that with cooperation and get lots of people to work towards something. And that we do that with enthusiasm, passion, drive to do things that are not accomplishable by others. That ground level, people have to walk in with. And then from there, you kind of build those other things. And I would say what that leads to is comparative greatness. There are lessons of leadership that come in there. I think, in the interest of time, I'm basically gonna just say, if you look at that last one, adversity is your asset. We are living in a time of tremendous adversity in every realm of what we think about. And we can either say the work is too hard, or this is the time when we distinguish what makes us different and what makes us better, and how we help to lead the way. As I say all of those things, this is my wonderful team. And what I will say is we have both Jennifer Workerson, who's in charge of our strategy, Dr. Todd Peters, who is our chief medical officer, and then a host of other folks from the organization who are here. It's one team. And what I will just say is the work is fun because of the team that you get to work with. The work is hard, but we get things done because I would say it's a combination of all of us coming together. When I think about this team, Shepard Pratt's been around since 1853. Just like, imagine the number of years. I'm only the sixth CEO ever in the history of Shepard. I'm the first non-white CEO for Shepard. More than half my leadership is from Shepard. The leadership team is women. We are truly, as an organization, representative of every community that we're in. And so how you work with the people and how you provide opportunities to grow, to succeed, to really do the things that are difficult, I think defines who we are. I'm gonna end at the last thing with just saying kind of what we do and why we're so passionate about what we do. Because I will say those last two points, mission and faith, mission of Shepard Pratt is to improve the quality of life of individuals and families by compassionately serving their mental health, addiction, special education, and community support needs. I say that, and at the same time, we have core values which are to lead and to do things that otherwise would not be done because of, really, from the words of our founder. As we do this, I will say, yes, we're the largest provider for psychiatric services, largest provider of special education in the state of Maryland. We get patients from all over the country and the world, over 380 locations, 160 programs, all mental health-related, and over 5,000 employees doing nothing but this. So we're talking about services at scale, every level of care you can imagine, in a broad geography. So these are services in Maryland across 19 counties. But I will also say, during the pandemic, building out what we knew what we needed was, how do we teach others to provide the same type of care everywhere else? We've actually provided consultations in over 30 states already. In some places, we're actually building out services in other geographies, not to put a Shepard logo on there, but to make sure that every community has a Shepard-equivalent service in their neighborhood. And as we do that, I guess the biggest thing I'll just say is, I'm incredibly proud, from a leader perspective, of this amazing team that I've built. For me, it's not what I do. It's to put the spotlight on the people that are accomplishing greatness, and to see them grow in their careers, to build and do things that they never thought they could accomplish, but most importantly, to make a difference each day. So with that, I'm gonna say those are my 10 minutes. I'm gonna stop there. We have amazing talent here. And so with that, what I'm gonna do is next ask Dr. Brandel to come up, and just a little bio about her as we get her slides up. It's about six pages long, so you know. But I will just say, so Dr. Brandel is the director for the Center for Bioethics and Master of Bioethics Program. She practices clinical and forensic psychiatry at Mass General Hospital. She's the director of law and ethics for the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior. She received her BA in philosophy and distinction from Yale, medical and law degrees from the University of Chicago. She completed her psychiatry and forensic psychiatry training at MGH McLean. She really works at kind of this intersection between, I will say, psychiatry, medicine, law, ethics. She's a past president of the Academy of CL Psychiatry, as well as a president of the APA from 22 to 23. May have the problem of saying yes to far too many things and doing everything, but she does it all really well. What I'm gonna do is not take up time in kind of going through everything that she's done, but instead say, please tell us about leadership from your framework. Come on up. Thank you. Thank you, Harsha. Let me just say, you'll hear from four of us. We all have incredibly different styles, but the messages are gonna be pretty consistent. So I think, you know, as you listen to this, just keep in mind some of the things that Dr. Trovetti just talked about. Just keep in mind some of the things that Dr. Trovetti just talked to us about, but thinking about our North Stars, our moral compasses, character and integrity, at the end of the day, who we are matters so much more than anything else about how we lead. So I wasn't gonna start with this, and one of the questions we had when we actually got together for this panel, one of the big questions was about mentorship and the other people who have influenced us and how that brings us to where we are. So I'm gonna focus on that today, but I do wanna tell a little story. So once upon a time, high in the height of the pandemic in the summer of 2020, I got a little phone call. And I never like to answer phone calls from people who might be involved in things without knowing what that phone call is gonna be about. So I did a little bit of thinking and I made a couple other phone calls and I realized that I was getting, then I got three phone calls, that someone was gonna ask me to do something at the APA and I wanted to know what it was before I returned that call. So by the time I answered that call, I realized that I was going to be asked if I was willing to be nominated to run for president-elect of the APA. And I went to talk to my family about it, because I had previously declined to do things. I still had kids at home. My kids at that point were about getting ready to finish high school. And I went to my family, and I said, so, you guys, this would be a major thing where, you know, I'd have to travel. I'd be on the road. I'm not going to be home. You guys have a lot going on. And they just looked at me with these blank looks on their face, and I couldn't really figure out what was going on. So, I said, could somebody help me out here, please? Just a little bit. Just tell me what's going on. I'm not used to silent teenagers. Usually, you have a lot to say. I tell people I go to work, because I've already heard about my 150 greatest flaws by 8 o'clock in the morning from my teenagers. So, they said, are you, like, so, my older son, Isaac, first starts talking, and he says, are you my mother? I kind of look at him, and I'm taking it back, and he said, don't you know what you taught us? If people ask you to serve, and there's an important reason for it, it's not really a choice. It's a responsibility. So, I will leave you with that, because I think sometimes, you know, in all the worries, are we doing too much? Are we taking on too much? Yes. We're also really setting a model for those who look up to us as the next generation, and what we can do in the world, and how we can ultimately, what all of this is about, leave the world a better place than we found it. So, with that, let me tell you a little story. So, everyone has their own version of the story, but this also happened, this was not from the pandemic. This is me. For anyone who's sitting for the boards, I must be somewhere around three, because I have a tricycle, and I appear to be able to ride it. So, during the pandemic, when all of this stuff was happening, my parents decided it would be a good time to digitize all the family photos, and they found this picture, and my mother says to me, you see, you're like on your way, you're a natural born leader. Well, I looked at this picture, and the first thing I remembered, this is in front of my childhood home, the sidewalk. You might not be able to see it, but right by that tree there, there's a really big gap in the sidewalk. I got the worst bruise on my elbow and my knee, learning to ride a two-wheeler in that spot. So, when I looked at that picture, I said, oh my goodness, like, I must have been worried about something looking back, and the fact that I might look like I'm smiling must be some reassurance. So, all of which is to say that I'm happy to my parents, in retrospect, they thought I would be a natural born leader. I can say to you all that if it doesn't come naturally, if you're naturally introverted and shy, you too can lead. And so, don't be afraid to overcome that and learn like other things. Okay, so these were my own early experiences of leadership. I thought everybody had the playbook. I was looking up to people like Saul, I had my first appointment to an APA committee because Vist thought it would be a good idea, Hirsch I was afraid to talk to until maybe like a year ago because he seems to have everything sewed together, so I had this idea that everybody else knew how to do this and I had no clue. And any time something went well, I got even more worried and anxious about it because I thought it could all end the next day. So, my own variations on this imposter narrative, at least now we talk about it, right, like if I weren't in the right place at the right time, right, so I would say, oh my gosh, if I had gotten up to go to the ladies room like five minutes later, I wouldn't have run into this person and I wouldn't have had this opportunity and my career would have been over. You think this isn't true, but well, it's true. And then the other thing that happened was this idea that if I, when I started doing it better and getting it right, they, I don't know who they is supposed to be or were supposed to be, they'll figure out I have no idea what I'm going to do, so I better tread really carefully. And it was actually really, really stressful. And I think the thing that really helped turn the corner was a group of mentors that I had who were able to see that I could do something different and maybe beyond what they were doing and made me realize that being successful at changing the world and in small ways and big ways wasn't really about being like someone else. It was about finding people who you could encourage you to be yourself. So this slide was when I finally started understanding that. I was a PGY3 resident and everybody thought I was going to be the chief resident in law and psychiatry. It kind of made sense. I was a lawyer. I was doing psychiatry and I was supposed to be working with that guy wearing the sports jacket standing up in the picture. That's Ron Chowton. You might not recognize him because he's not wearing a tie. And so Ron was supposed to be, so I went to talk to Ron and he said, well, actually, being a consultation liaison psychiatrist is the best way of learning how to be a forensic psychiatrist because you need to learn how to formulate questions, ask them, and answer them. And I think it's really great. And he was really inspired by also a great mentor, Tom Gutile. He's sitting down. He wears and is pointing to the shirt that says, Never Worry Alone, one of the great leaders in forensic psychiatry. I knew that I had come of age when Tom finally stopped sitting right about where Saul's sitting in the audience of every talk I gave. It was maybe like a year ago that he stopped, but just the constant presence and support and being there to know, and it's something that he's modeled and I've stuck with. But the Never Worry Alone is really, really important, especially we have to trust that. And the person who I did go work for that year as a chief resident, the reason I have this picture, you can barely see him, that's Ted Stern, longtime chief of the consult service at Mass General. But we were at this old, old Western-type village in Arizona for a CL psychiatry meeting. And you'll see it says the Rawhide Electric Chair, but the joke was that Ted was so prolific and so good at asking and answering questions that his brain power would go reverse through this electric chair and power this entire village that had no electricity. So this was sort of the beginning and I would say the mentorship lesson from this that's so important is to remember not to have the answers, but to know how to formulate and ask the questions. If you can ask the questions and you can surround yourself with the right people and work really hard and develop the expertise, you can make progress. And I also, when I think about mentorship, this is John Herman, longtime, probably one of the longest serving members of the faculty at Mass General. He is an associate chair of psychiatry now. He hired me as a training, he was the training director. And then he abruptly moved on and we had a new training director by the time I arrived at Mass General, but he agreed to continue to mentor me and is now one of my great friends. He, when I, this idea about being present, right, Tom Gutzheil was always present in a really accepting way. John's message is be present and stop worrying so much. So even to this day, we had dinner a couple weeks ago and he said, this is such an exciting dinner. He's like, you've been in your job for seven months and you haven't started talking about what you're going to do next. Just slow down a little bit, be there and know that, he once said to me, chance favored the prepared and he told me that Mark Twain said it. So it seems like pretty much common knowledge wisdom, but it actually turns out that the quote comes from Louis Pasteur, a slightly more intimidating figure who said chance favors the prepared mind. But both of these things really stick with me because if we work hard, if we learn, if we're diligent, we surround ourselves with the people, the opportunities will come. What we need to do is teach ourselves how to find them. That was John Herman. We already talked about that. Okay. So how do we put this all together? So a couple of take-home points, talent is work, right? So one of the books I like about this is Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, right? Even if you're really, really talented to be really, really exceptional, it takes 10,000 hours of practice, okay? So just to put things in perspective and also this idea, right, we sometimes say practice makes perfect. That's anathema, right, to being effective. Actually practice makes better, right? So it turns out that failure, and I put failure in quotations because everything that doesn't go the way you wanted it to go is actually an opportunity to learn. So the role of things that don't go well and what you learn from them has become a big sort of buzzword in the business community now, big books coming out about leadership and learning from failure. One of the books I really like, like Hirsch, I read a lot of books about people who have learned to lead through sports and athletics. The Talent Code is by a psychologist, Dan Coyle, who wanted to know why some soccer players became amazing world-class athletes and others didn't, and many of them were coming out of these training grounds in Brazil and the global south. So he went down there to see what was going on. He's like, you know, how do these countries build these, like, incredible training facilities that generate these amazing athletes? And he gets there, and they're just chain-link fences and, you know, little pieces of ground. They don't even have a lot of grass necessarily. So what he did is he said, okay, well, I'm going to observe. And what he noticed was the difference between athletes who had talent and became very good, probably professional athletes but not great, and the ones who were world-class athletes is that the one—soccer players—the ones who became really exceptional were the ones who practiced the things they weren't good at. So they could identify in themselves the things that they struggled with and worked to perfect them or at least make them as good as they can, as opposed to most of the others, the 99% who would practice the things that made them feel good and help them be successful. I'll come back to this point in a minute. This is really, really important. And I think you'll see the themes coming through in terms of how you get there, knowing your resources, and listen to the people who you trust, right? Listening is sometimes the hardest part because we always want to do and be successful. So I copied Hersh's slides while he was putting up the references in the theory, right? Self-awareness, cultivating a culture of self-awareness, not just in ourselves but in our teams. And then knowing who to go to for supervision, coaching, and real evaluations, right? Anonymous 360 evaluations, when people actually tell you what they think in a safe space. And not to be afraid of that, but to realize that's a learning opportunity. It's really nice when everybody says, hey, you've done a great job, you're amazing. But it's actually helpful when people tell you where are places that didn't go well and how you can improve. All right. So what is the sweet spot? So I used to run this clinic and I had like 50 people at one point reporting to me and I had to do one evaluation a week, basically, for people's jobs. And now Sophia Mata has the pleasure of running that program. So it became lore and people would be laughing once they came into my office. And finally I said, what is so funny? Like what's this whole thing on the street out there? And so one of the social workers said to me, you know, everybody says they come in, they're feeling really good about their job, we have a great team, they're doing really well, and they leave anxious. And so we had this whole conversation and this became my mantra. If you're not a little anxious, you're not growing, right? So I would say to people, well, you're doing a great job and you can continue to do that great job, but three years from now you're going to hate me because you're going to be burned out, you're not going to be pushing yourselves, and you're going to be looking for another job, but you're going to be looking for another job with the same skill set. You won't have grown. So the real challenge both as a leader and in managing up to whoever you report to is really about finding comfortable spaces, but not to be afraid to be uncomfortable, because that can help us signal that we're actually growing. And then also if we're not laughing, we're not working. So have fun in seeing what happens also. You also heard about authenticity, right? So Aristotle, going way, way back, had the concept of eudaimonia in virtue ethics, which is about human flourishing, right? And so Aristotle's view of ethics has to do with cultivating character. But importantly, unlike most philosophers of ethics who focus on how we reason and make the right decision, Aristotle was one of the first who told us that we have to think and we have to feel. And so my training director used to say, you know, you have to bring your whole self. You have to let it leak a little. You can't be so serious that the people who you work with should know not everything about you, but about who you are, because that's what you lead with. So finding our voice and developing patterns. All right. So as we finish up, I would say that in order for us to flourish as leaders and for those who we work with and lead to flourish, by the way, this is my favorite tree. It's in my front yard. It's a cherry tree that doesn't grow cherries, but it's really very beautiful. But it makes me think about the kinds of things that we need to flourish. Having solid roots and grounding, keeping ourselves healthy and having good resources and supports can lead to beautiful, vibrant blooms, a better world, good things happening. But it also requires that we fertilize often, right? So we know that there are usual seasons and changes and cycles. We give care. And also, there are some things we can't control, like how much it's going to rain. Maintaining at a very basic level relationships. If we don't have trust, we can't build a team and we can't work together. And also being sure to remember to have gratitude and time for reflection. And so on that note, I really wanted to thank all of you for the opportunity to serve last year as president of APA. And I looked back to try to think about all the things and all the opportunities to make changes and make things great and good. I had really opportunities that are unimaginable. And I hope that on your behalf, I have done my very little part to change the world for the good. So thank you very much, and thanks for the opportunity to speak this morning. Fabulous, and I will say it's wonderful to go from someone who has just served as the president of the APA to the president-elect of the APA coming in. So I want to next invite Ramasamy Viswanathan, who is the president-elect of the APA. He's also the professor and interim chair for the Department of Psychiatry right here at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. He's also the director of CL Psychiatry. Clearly, CL Psychiatry is doing well in terms of presence of the APA. He has also served as a presiding officer, faculty, and professional staff of the College of Medicine there for 2020 to 2022. He is also involved with the Faculty Wellness Work Group, and he is on the CL Psychiatry Committee at GAP, or the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. With that, I want to invite Dr. Viswanathan to the stage and say welcome, and looking forward to hearing about leadership. Thank you, Dr. Trivedi. Good morning. The very fact that you are all here at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning means you are already probably true leaders or you are on your pathway to become true leaders. Congratulations. You know, I didn't expect this much crowd. It's not advancing. Oh, you know what? Yeah, let's see. It may not be in slideshow, wait, yeah. Let me put it in slideshow, I think that would be a reason, yeah. Okay, good, yeah, oh, this one, okay, okay, got it, yeah. Okay, obviously, everybody has, you know, we are psychiatrists, we know our childhood is quite important in who we become. These are my parents. My life started with a tragedy. My father suddenly died of a heart attack when I was just two years old, and my father was only 42 years old, and I'll tell you how it impacted my life later. And my mother was left to bring up five children. I was the youngest, and the oldest was 10 years old, and she hadn't finished high school like most women in those days, and she was not working. So the one thing I learned in India in those days, if you didn't have a father, your social standing was low, and also father played a very important role in guiding the development. I hope they still do. So this affected me. So the key points is, actually it has bearing on what I just told you, is it's important to learn from others, not only from mentoring, actually mentoring is very important, but you may not always, you know, imagine a two-year-old, you know, how is he going to get mentored, right? So I was lucky, a lot of family members, and even strangers, you know, they were very kind to me, especially teachers. But I also very early on learned that it's important to observe other people, and I also became very interested in biographies, which, you know, like these are all true leadership tales, right? People overcoming tremendous obstacles. And experience is quite important, but we should learn from our experience, but we cannot rely only on experience. You know, the saying goes that experience is a comb which nature gives bald men. It's much smarter to learn from other people's experience, both successes and mistakes, and learn from them. And other important point is, as Dr. Brendel already alluded to, it's very important to say yes, volunteer to serve, obviously it gives us all the self-fulfillment, but you also, there's a lot of learning, growth, and networking will happen, and opportunities will open up when you are serving. And also, you should persist, don't give up, obviously, in some things, there's a point in which you cannot continue on the same path, but you may have to change directions. There is a saying, if you're religious, it goes like, when one door is closed, God opens other doors. So it's important to always be prepared for looking at opportunities which you may not notice, and as the pastor's quote, Dr. Brendel mentioned, you have to have a really prepared mind and actively look for opportunities. The other point is synergy, like Dr. Brendel was president of the Academy of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry, right? It's not, you know, that and the APA, and she was also very active in AMA, there are three different organizations, your work can build up a lot, but on the other hand, you can help one organization work, influence the other, and you can actually move up in two or three organizations at the same time, because you are belonging to the other two organizations. So that's something important, you don't want to overstretch yourself, but at the same time, there's value to belonging to more than one organization and being more than one organization. One of the early experiences in my life in terms of observational learning was my uncle, actually he was the director of a pastor institute in India, so pastor has, actually I'm quite influenced by reading the biography of pastor, I really admire him, but my uncle was an internationally famous virologist, and so I happened to meet Albert Sabin, and when he visited, he had to choose one site in the whole of India to produce polio vaccines, and so, but basically, my uncle kind of became a role model that inspired me to become a physician and a scientist. I graduated from Madras Medical College, India, came to U.S., did medical residency, and then switched to psychiatry, and I did a psychiatry residency at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, where now I'm chair, and I also did a CL psychiatry fellowship. And I also did a research training in psychiatry and got a doctor of medical science degree from SUNY Downstate. So basically, in terms of academic psychiatry, for whatever reason, I have a passion for lifelong learning, to this day, I keep on learning, I'm board certified in internal medicine, psychiatry, concentration liaison, geriatric addiction, forensic. The main reason I keep up all these certifications is because it really helps me to teach my students and residents better, provide them with cutting-edge knowledge, which, you know, I get a lot of satisfaction. I run grand rounds, which is highly regarded, but one of the things, again, you know, in terms of synergy is while I'm running it, you know, I get a lot of speakers from different areas of the country and different areas of expertise. I have them meet with me and some select group of faculty and the trainees before the grand rounds, which, again, help us to learn about what they do, their institution, which has a tremendous impact on our trainees in, you know, in terms of learning from their experiences. And of course, it also provides networking opportunities for them. And in terms of synergy, you know, I have a 50-minute commute. Previously, I used to hate that, as anybody would, but then with the advent of podcasts, now I don't mind. Even if I have to drive two hours, say, to Philadelphia, whatever it is, I don't mind at all, you know, because I listen to the New England Journal of Medicine, American Journal of Cardiology, AJP, you know, all of them have excellent podcasts, and you also have audio books. So you really, again, you are not wasting your time, you know, you are using that time to continue to learn. And clinical excellence, you know, many of you are excellent clinicians, you know, that also is important, you know, by, again, focusing on continuing to learn, you also better yourself as a clinician. Okay, this slide, the one reason I had is you all know about Mind Games, and for the residents, and it's always very exciting to watch. My residents at SUNY Downstate, in the past five years, they had been finalists for three years. I'm very proud of them, but unfortunately, this year, they didn't make it into the final three. They were in final 10, but not final three. Guess what? The chair is in the Mind Games. You know, the APA has started Mind Games Masters for people like us. I decided to enter the contest, answered 100 questions. To my amazement, I'm one of the top three, so I guess all these journal podcasts and certifications have helped me, so I encourage you to attend on Monday at 12 noon and cheer me up. And my research, obviously, has also been influenced by my father's early death. I'm interested in death, ethics, how physicians communicate about death, some ethical issues involved with it, our own death anxiety, how it influences our behavior. Also, treatment adherence is very close to my heart. I want people to live long, and so I have done research on GYN oncology, treatment adherence to radiation treatment and chemotherapy, and also how psychological factors influence them. And my theme for the APA presidency is on lifestyle for positive mental and physical health. So, again, it shows, you know, how my experience influenced me. Okay, coming to the APA, you probably, you all know on the right of this picture is Dr. Jack McIntyre. He has been very influential, both as a mentor, as well as my observing him throughout my professional life. I was the first person of color to be elected president of the Brooklyn District Branch of the APA, and when I got elected, Jack McIntyre was the president-elect, so I invited him to come to my inaugural ceremony, and he gladly accepted and came. You know, actually, one of the things, I may increase my work for myself, one of the things I have found is if you invite the APA president-elect, they are extremely busy, but they will come, and that's a very good experience for the district branch, and so this was an important turning point, and because what I did was I also started as a president of the district branch. I started residence scholarly presentations contest because I was interested in promoting the four residency programs in my district branch, and at the time I started it, it was the only such kind of program run by a district branch of the APA, and it was enormously successful in providing mentorship and increasing the scholarliness among all the residency programs in my district branch, but one thing I did was I began inviting the APA president-elect to this event, so it again inspires the residents and also provides them networking opportunities and also puts the APA president to become more aware of the grassroots issues. I also have run poster sessions, and I'm also into wellness, so I started a 5K run and walk event for the residents. All these things, apart from the primary motive, they also help in networking and really help the residents in many ways, and this is one example. My program, residence scholarly presentations contest, has been written up by the Psych News a couple of times, and this was when Schatzberg was president-elect. He visited our district branch. The other important part for leadership is advocacy, and no matter how great science we do, how great clinical practice which we do, if you don't engage in advocacy, then you're just reaching only a few people, and your science may not even get translated into services that can be delivered, so advocacy is quite important, and again, young people have to get involved in advocacy. Many people do not realize, and not only obviously you are providing service, there's a lot to learn about psychiatry than what can be learned just by reading journals or engaging in classroom learning, and because if I were not active in the DB, I might not have gotten into advocacy, so I became quite active in advocacy. The APA does a great job, has always been doing a great job in promoting advocacy and also training people, but many people do not know that training exists, and so they do not take advantage of it. For residents, often it is free, so this was ... The person here, though, is not a resident. It was my son. This was when he was 10 years old. When I came to Washington to lobby, he said, Dad, I want to come with you to lobby. He was not interested in sightseeing, but even at that age, for some reason, he had enormous interest and knowledge of all the many senators from throughout the country about their issues, so he came. At that time, Richard Gephardt was a potential presidential candidate, and so my son got an autograph of him on a White House cap, and this appeared in psych news. Imagine if Gephardt had become president, how valuable this cap will be, especially with the evidence that he cited. But anyway, the thing is, my son, again, got inspired by the advocacy work I was doing. Now he is actually in the West Wing of the White House, just two doors from President Biden, and he's doing a great job. Many people, if you model advocacy to them, that inspires them, and some of them, like Dr. Trivedi mentioned, that legislative experience has really helped him to become the great leader that he is. And of course, in terms of other organizational involvement, I'm also the chair of the CL Psychiatry Committee for the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, which is a think tank, and I find it really quite enlightening to really learn to the critical thinking in small group settings of really excellent people. This basically shows the various components, so there are two things it's important, like in terms of the APA, there is the assembly, which is elected, and assembly is really a fountain house of knowledge. I learned a lot just by observing Dr. Roger Peel, I'm sure many of you know, and he was very critical thinker, extremely knowledgeable, and he made you question many of the assumptions he made. And also the various components, again, you get exposed to many different styles of thinking, and so it's important for people to get involved, no matter how busy you are, try to get involved with the various components. And then, of course, I was fortunate enough to be elected president, and following good footsteps of Dr. Brendel and Dr. Livurdis, and still my team is going to be Lifestyle for Positive Mental and Physical Health, but that's not the only thing I'm going to be focusing on. I'm still going to focus on advocacy and promoting research and education, so a number of other initiatives need to be continued. So I'm thankful to a number of people, and also I'm thankful to my wife and family, they have been extremely supportive, that again becomes very key, pay attention to your family while you are running around, and sometimes you can do things synergistically also, even in that thing, try to do that. And I thank you all, and look forward to working with you, thank you. Wonderful, thank you so much. So I believe we might be getting a slideshow coming up, thank you. So I want to talk about Sol Levin. I will say while we've gotten many different perspectives on leadership, I will say for me it's been a wonderful pleasure to specifically have Sol here. Sol has served and is finishing 11 years as the CEO and Medical Director of our EPA. He's also been a clinical professor at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He also prior to his role at the APA actually led the District of Columbia's Department of Health. Prior to that, I will say, he's done a number of things. I've gotten to work with him in relation to the delegation that goes to the AMA, but I will also say that he's had a storied career even prior to that, and so what I will also just say about him is I was intrigued to learn that he actually served as the President and CEO for Medical Education for South African Blacks, an anti-apartheid education trust providing scholarships to South African black students. He served as a special expert appointee in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and SAMHSA, and currently serves as a Secretary General for the WPA, the World Psychiatric Association. We're in for a treat, and I just say thank you, Sol, for everything you've done. Come on up, and we'd love to hear and learn from you. So, good morning. This is a pleasure to be here, and in fact, it's a happy, sad occasion, because from now on this will be my last meeting as the CEO and Medical Director. It's been a wonderful ride, and I start off the talk by saying I have an uncle in South Africa, who every time I'd go back to South Africa, every three to five years, he'd say, so how's your job going, and I said, oh, I've got a new job, and he used to say, what is it with you? You cannot hold down a job, and I said, well, you know what, after three to five years, I get bored. I've either done what I wanted to do in the job and then want to move on, and I do say there was one job that just got me and that I broke that sort of charm of getting out as soon as you can once you've achieved something, and that was the APA. It was one of the greatest honors of my life to have been chosen to become the CEO and Medical Director of the APA, an amazing job meeting amazing people who do amazing care for millions of people in this country, and to me, that's the real tale as I come to the end of my career of saying that, boy, if it wasn't for each and every one of you in this room taking care of everyone, of all populations, in some ways, we would not be a stronger profession today as we are, and in some ways, I say the only good thing that came out of COVID was that there isn't a person in this world that at one point wasn't anxious during COVID of either getting COVID, dying from COVID, watching family members, friends go get COVID, and that they then began to realize what exactly we talk about in terms of mental health, and I think it has really changed. You know, finally, it has changed where they now see us as not the ancillary, oh, you're going to have to go to a shrink, but now you need to want to be with a shrink because they really help you in terms of both the good times and the bad times, and for that, I'm deeply appreciative of every one of you, you know, who does the job day to day, and I've looked at Hirsh, we go way back, and he now has one of the largest healthcare systems in this country, and it isn't just for mental health and substance abuse, it's his primary healthcare, and it is truly an amazing center, so if you do ever get out to Baltimore, please call him up, go and see this amazing campus that he has. Am I changing slides, or, yeah, so just very quickly as disclosures, I'm the CEO Medical Director of the American Psychiatric Association, for a few more days, oh, it's not, thank you. Will you rise to the level of your incompetence? So my quick disclosures, I'm CEO Medical Director for two and a half more weeks, and then I'm handing it over to an amazing person. She is going to really be a phenomenal CEO Medical Director. Dr. Wills, when you meet her, you automatically just bond with her, you have confidence in her, and I think we're all going to really prosper with her term beginning on the 1st of June. I do sit as the Chair of the Board of the American Psychiatric Association Foundation, which was one way to make sure that we always kept the two organizations together, was often sometimes the foundations sort of go their own way from the organization that they actually came from originally. So the founding fathers and mothers of APA said, no, we've got to have cross-functional people there. I'm a clinical professor at George Washington University, and I'm now the Secretary General of the World Psychiatric Association, an amazing organization, and as I like to say to people, it also has different committees and councils of whatever your specialty, subspecialty is that you as an individual can actually join, and you really have these great minds from around the world coming. You know, it's not just the American world. It is literally every country, and it really makes a great difference to the association. So as you can tell from the accent, it is clearly American. When they say, well, where are you from in America? I say it's Californian because that's where I say I got my citizenship, and that's what I believe, but I do know there is an accent there. It is from South Africa, and I grew up during the height of apartheid, and I had a very, a father and a mother who were very anti-the government. My mother, when she was five months pregnant with my younger sister just below me, was walking out of, she and her best friend, her best friend's husband owned a pharmacy, and they weren't very wealthy, so my mother used to go in on the afternoon and work with them to help them out so their staff could have some time off, and one day she came out and she saw two Afrikaans men walking along the street, busy talking, and a black man came alongside, and he was trying to get in front of them because they were walking a little slow, and as he walked past them, he bumped into the one man, and this is in the height of apartheid we're talking about in the early 1960s, to which the two Afrikaans started to beat him up. The police get called, and the next thing, it is the black man getting into the paddy wagon, not the two Afrikaans who actually caused the fight, and my mother, who was then, I think, six months pregnant with my younger sister, goes up and she spoke perfect Afrikaans as well, and she says to the policeman, you're arresting the wrong person, and he says, what do you mean? She says, so she tells him what she saw. It wasn't he really apologized for bumping as he was trying to get past, and apologized to them, and then they beat him up, to which the policeman said, ma'am, you're inciting people that you shouldn't be supporting, so she got into the paddy wagon, we were forced into the paddy wagon, and my dad got this call to say, you better go and bail her out. Now, here she was, pregnant, and it was essentially, to me, as I remember that story, of that, if we don't step up when we see injustice, where even if it's going to affect us, we lose some humanity within ourselves on it, and I think that's what psychiatrists do every day. They try to look at the humanity of the people that come before them, and in the post-apartheid era, obviously, I'm, as you know, a gay person. That was the other sort of real stigma within South Africa. It was one of those that you could be arrested for on it, and it's how do you begin to step up and do as best you can, possibly, within a world, and I think that's been the philosophy I learned from my parents and my grandparents, and I hope that the term that I've had at APA, I've done the same thing. When there's something that needs to be changed, we need to change it. There may be some people who are gonna disagree, but in the end, you're gonna try to do the right thing, and you do it every day as clinicians. It's the one thing I'm envious about, is that my career took more into the administrative side than the clinical side, so I think that's the first lesson, is just be true to yourself, and be true to the morals that you were brought up with. The, oh, I'm going the wrong way, sorry. While I was in South Africa, just as I was leaving, they had three people diagnosed with HIV. Now, at that time, we didn't know what it was. We just knew it was a highly infectious disease. It had been in the black population in South Africa for at least five, 10 years. We used to have the wasting disease, is what we called it at the time, but now it had finally come into the white community, and now the South Africans were gonna have to deal with that it wasn't just a black disease. It was now also, oh, illness. It was also, you were going to, you could catch it as even a white person, and in the LGBT community, obviously, you, many of you are, I think, of an age where you remember the pandemic. It was another opportunity to step up and start saying, don't look at what your preconceived ideas was of a person. You just wanna see the person who's there that you're gonna take care of, and I think that's what my career became all along was how do you make it better for someone? In some ways, I've been right. In other ways, I've been wrong, and I get told very quickly. I have some wonderful colleagues who keep me on the straight and narrow pathway. There's mentors sitting in the audience who did, even from a young kid, they used to say, Saul, you've got the gift of the gab, but you've gotta be careful how you use it, and he knows, I'm not going to say who it is, but he truly has been a mentor for me all these years, and I think with HIV, it also changed the world in a way for us to start thinking how do we help our humanity as we work every day? I became the president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, and that was the first time I began to realize I was a radical person. I never thought I was was because halfway through my presidency, I started to say, you know, we were not doing enough education out into the community, and particularly the gay community, to which they promptly all got upset and said, no, we like it the way it is, and if you don't like it, you should resign as president, so that's what I promptly did, resign as president, and in some ways, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because it reminded me that if you don't step up when you see something that should be happening, we are lesser because of us not doing that, and I think that's always been what I've said. Whatever I've done, I've done with great purpose, and I'll say most recently, there was an issue where because of the last two meetings before this one, you know, APA was in a little bit of financial trouble. You know, we really count on this annual meeting, and now all of a sudden, post-COVID, we found that people were not coming to the meetings. They were still worried, and we really had to, and all of a sudden, the board came to me and they said, cut your budget by $2 million, and you have exactly two weeks to cut the budget because we were gonna go into the new budget the 1st of January, and I sat there, and I thought, who do, you know, how do you do this to a reduction in force, knowing that you've had these great people doing work, and I'm sure some of you saw the hullabaloo around it that the people, I don't wanna say chose, but the people that I felt I had other people within the association who can pick up that work, and it did cause a fair amount of angst. Lots of letters were being written. I believe they're still being written about why did I choose those people, and it wasn't because of their expertise. It was because I had others within the organization who could do two jobs at once, and I think that's the part of what a CEO medical director has to decide. Sometimes you have to make real hard decisions, and I think along my whole career, that is essentially what I've been asked to do, and my uncle once, another uncle once said to me, he said, you know, you are someone who likes to clean up things. You know, you go into an organization, you see what needs to be done. That's good for the day you're in. He says, five years from now, although poor APA had me for now 11 years. This is the longest job I've ever had, but it's been the best job I've ever had, and at times, it is hard decision making, and I think you have people around you. I can look here in this room now. Yo, I'm not gonna point out, because then I get into trouble, but you know who these people are who have really supported me through the good times and bad times, and that's what you as a leader needs to have. It's not what you are. You're not alone, and at times, sometimes I feel I fall down on the people who have supported me, and I haven't been as much omnipresent, and in some ways, I was thinking last night, I went out for dinner, and I had one of my best friends at that dinner, and I barely got to talk to him, and I realized, oh my God, you know, you talk to those, you talk, in some ways, what I did was not talk to the person who's been closest to my heart for the longest time that I've been in this job or even before this job, and it's those sort of things where you have to count on your friends, your colleagues, who will buoy you up in the bad times and lift you up, but at the same time, when things are good, you've gotta start doing the same for everyone else, and I think that's what you all do every day of your life in your practices, no matter whether you're a clinician or whether you're a great CEO. You're like, you're just an amazing system. He took a small little hospital and has turned it into a mega giant in this country, and yet he's still the same person that I've known for these many years. I've grounded on his feet. You can go and talk to him if you need to on it, so I think when I look at my life, it has been privileged to be around. John Fryer made a big, I was barely around. I was a young kid at 72. John Fryer, as you know, was the person who essentially put on a mask and said in the 70s, I'm a human being, I'm a person, and I'm a gay man. I do my jobs, and one of the big things that he spurred was show me the data that homosexuality was an illness versus just another part of the continuum of your sexuality and your life, and he really stepped up. He had to wear that terrible mask, as you can see. I said the biggest travesty was that he was a really large man, and they had to stretch the mask over his face, so it actually turns out to be that the mask was actually that of Nixon, is who they got, but you could not see anything, and they had to cut him out of the mask so we don't have it, but he was the first person to really say, show us why homosexuality should be considered a mental illness, and he is in some ways an unsung hero, but in some ways for the gay people, you're gay and lesbian and bisexual and unisexual, he was the one who actually stood up with great risk to his profession, and it did hurt him, was when it got found out that some of the hospitals he was in Philadelphia said you can't stay here, they moved him out, but it's listening to those people and learning from them that sometimes you can stand out with the betterment of all, and he was one of those people. I think the lessons I've learned as a gay person that I'm particularly concentrating on, but it's all of us, who we are and what we bring to the table. I always say to people, when I came to this country, they told me about the melting pot, that all these years it was a melting pot that you came into when you came into this country, and I remember distinctly seeing it, and I think I was 26 when I came to this country, I remember thinking I don't wanna be in a melting pot, I'm different, I have different issues with me on it, and I remember thinking, boy, aren't we like a mixed green salad? Different shapes, different sizes, different tastes, different colors, and isn't that better? But the one thing I learned along the way from some of my mentors sitting in this room was we have to have a seat at the table and you've got to do everything you possibly can to sit at that table. And I think that's where I've had great mentors who got me those seats on those tables. And still to this day, as I think as I leave the APA, you know, I stand on their shoulders, you know, because they were the ones who helped me along the way. And I think that's what we've all got to look for. And I think each and every one of us, and I'm talking to the younger population, you must find those mentors because they keep you going well. You know, a person can be an unsung hero because they stand up for their beliefs. And for those, we need to really thank them, whether you know them personally or you don't. And there's a lot of suffering in this world, but there are still people who are standing up for the good of who they represent. Diversity is crucial. APA has become so much stronger. Just make sure you give me the time, you know, I can babble on, you know. Diversity is so crucial. And when I look at now the team that we now have at APA, you know, we truly are that mescaline salad, you know, where we come with different mentorship. I cannot thank my mentors enough. Some of them, I wish I would have said it to them personally, you know, as I got older and went back to them. And in fact, as I sit here today, and I have to be careful because I'm going to also talk about him a little at the talk this afternoon, my talk to the assembly, I lost Herpades. Herpades, as you know, was a giant in psychiatry, you know. He was the president-elect when I was the Burroughs Wellcome Fellowship, now the Leadership Fellowship president. And I went to the first board meeting, and they had these huge three books that they had. You know, in those days, you didn't have computers quite ready yet. And I noticed that certain people would have tabs, hundreds of tabs that you knew. They went through those books, you know. Others had one or two tabs, and others had no tabs. And they would, the moment they'd get to the thing, they'd open it up, start reading. And at the end of the first meeting that I was there, Herpades was president-elect, and Paul Fink, you know, was the president. And they said, any questions, any comments? And I've always believed you put your hand up immediately because people are always shy. So if you want to get a question in, put your hand up quickly. Even if it's a stupid question, it gets everyone to run to then feel comfortable to do it. And I said, you know, I noticed we have these thick books. I mean, they really were this thick, and there were three of them, you know. And I said, I noticed some people had lots of tabs, others didn't. Why don't we have a consent calendar? And you thought I would have said we should close APA down, it's a bad organization. It went ballistic, and Herpades, who was the president-elect, as I'm sure many of the older generation knew him, he was very tall, he was very somber, and he had a cutting tongue. And he said to me, you whippersnapper, how dare you come in here and tell us how we should be running this organization when you're just barely in the organization? And I remember thinking, and Paul Fink, I do say, in male ception, jumped to my, no, no, Saul is a creature of the AMA, he said, because I was fairly involved more with the AMA, a creature of the AMA, and don't think of that. Herpades became my greatest mentor. He recently passed, and even three weeks before he passed, he called me to say, how are you doing? And that's what I think we've all got to look for. So the moral of the story here is, find those mentors, stick with those mentors. They will come into your lives, and they may go out, and they'll come back. And you, each and every one of us, need to become mentors. So with that, I just want to thank you for the honor of being your CEO and Medical Director for the last, what, 11 years. And it's been a job of a lifetime, and I now go on to WPA, World Psychiatric, where I'm going to be their Secretary General, and I ask you to start looking at that as an organization to belong to as well. So we're going to have some international people all coming together to talk. Thank you. I'm sorry if I ran over time. So I'm going to thank, thanks all. I'm going to ask our other panelists to come up. We do have a few questions that we're going to take together. And I guess, you know, since you're already seated, Saul, let me first start off by, I think, which is one that's true for all leaders, which is, what keeps you up at night? What do you think about as a leader? You know, I think it's, particularly this job, and it's changed a bit, because I think since COVID, people have begun to realize that they all in some ways had a mental health issue somewhere, be it depression, be it anxiety. So it's changed. So what keeps me up is, how do we now take APA to keep people reminded it is just another illness? Yes, the brain's the most complex thing in the body. It's taking us to this point to get you really begin to unwind those secrets. And it's, how do we keep the momentum going on, the researchers getting it and then turning it into clinical care, that we could one day hopefully cure some of our illnesses, but also ensure that it becomes just an illness, just like diabetes, hypertension. And that's what keeps me up, is are we pushing the envelope for psychiatry? We can't get up. Definitely. Others? Yeah. What keeps me up at night is, I shouldn't be working late into the night. The thing is, there is always things going on. I used to sacrifice my sleep a lot, because get a lot of work done, there's no distraction. But as I said, sleep is extremely important. It's one of the pillars of lifestyle medicine. So now I try hard to get seven hours of sleep, I'm not always successful. The workaholic in me cuts into it. But wellness is quite important of our members, most of the physicians, we are compulsive and we neglect some essential parts of our life. So we have to pay attention to it. What doesn't keep me up at night? That's my answer. Perfect. Perfect. So as we think about things that keep us up, I guess the other comment I would just make is we're in a very different society, right? It definitely seems like the level of divisiveness is different. How quickly things can blow up is very different. The social media cycle, media cycle in general is different. What is it like to be a leader in the post-COVID world, post-George Floyd world? And just really thinking about it's hard to do things too fast, too slow, right words, wrong words. Let's talk about being a leader in the current, present day. Sure. So, you know, I think in order to make impactful change, we have to create environments, communities, spaces where we can do that really hard work. And behind that divisiveness are really a competing set of values about how we imagine the future and how we imagine our society. So the way that I've done that, I only had 10 minutes and I knew I was going to tell a lot of stories. But one of the things that I do in all the meetings that we have, it's something we started at our medical school, which is called the rules of the road. I don't like rules. I think commitments are much more important because it's something that we all agree to rather than something we're told to do. So that community commitment, we've started teaching in every space within our programs. We start every class. And I start every meeting in every organization that I'm part of with a version of those commitments, beginning with number one, remembering we're all human. And being human means that we make mistakes by definition and that we forgive each other. We forgive ourselves and each other when we don't get it right. But it's the first place that gives us permission to try to talk about these really hard things without turning it into just another opportunity to be divisive. So other things that are on that list, and then I'll pass it along, are remembering to invite others in. So training ourselves to look for the voices we're not hearing, and actually acknowledging people and creating space, remembering the difference between facts and opinion, knowing that both are important, but learning how to distinguish between the two, and also just really all about bringing our best selves to every opportunity to do the work. Soon after George Floyd's death, I organized a presentation by Ezra Griffith, and that was really eye-opening. The main thing that he stressed was treating each other with dignity. As Dr. Brendel said, everyone is human, and we have to really feel that dignity, and in our communications, we have to reflect that dignity, no matter there are always going to be differences of opinion. And one of the things which COVID did, even though it was a terrible pandemic, in terms of the technology, suddenly it boosted telehealth, and all of us, many people were really scary about doing telehealth, but now everybody loves it. And actually, one personal story is, I think it was in 2002, as an assembly member, I passed an action paper that the American Psychiatric Association should promote telepsychiatry as a way of addressing access to care. It didn't go much anywhere, you know, the APA was trying to do it, but it didn't catch on, but it took COVID to really implement it. We shouldn't be afraid of technology, including artificial intelligence, but we have to keep in mind it's a tool, and any tool, we can use it to our benefit. You know, there's a lot of potential for technology to help our patients. You know, we are only limited in our time to spend with the patient, so technology can amplify our power, but any tool can also be used wrongly, or unethically, or destructively, so we have to be really at the forefront in influencing, you know, promoting guidelines, including ethical guidelines, and working with policy makers. Thank you. I think we're a global world now, you know, it's not that you live in your country and that's the only thing you know, and I think the more we get to understand the other countries and how they have done their work, how they've been educated, I think will only strengthen all of us. You know, we're in a tough time in this country, you know, as we go towards these elections, it is so divisive that it does worry me, you know, as the country which for me was the land of milk and honey, you know, and was going to be the one with the greatest democracy, to begin to see such a polarity, you know, is a little worrying to me as I sit here, you know, and this election is very important, you know, and I'm not saying who you should vote for, you vote your conscience, but, you know, we also need to remember that we're here to do good, we're not here to look at the bad part, we're here to help the people do the best that they can possibly be. So I'm a little worried, you know, as an immigrant, I'm a little worried. Agreed. Last question. If you think about yourself earlier in your career, what's the one piece of advice you wish you would have gotten? Lesson more. Yeah, even though I stressed on observation, I wish I had observed more, and also it's important to speak up, you know, as Sol mentioned, there are many opportunities wherein if you speak up, you know, you can affect the course of many events, and especially early in your career, you are afraid to speak up. So if something bothers you, you should really try to speak up appropriately, of course. Well, I already told you mine, I would have laughed more and worried less. That's only true. And I will say in many ways, you do need to be in the room, and so showing up is probably step number one. I'm going to say thank you all for showing up this morning, we're going to leave a few minutes, we're all going to be up here. Feel free to come on up, ask questions. Wishing each of you success in your leadership journey, and thank you for spending the time. Thank you.

leadership

psychiatry

Harsh Trivedi

Shepherd Pratt

Saul Levin

Rebecca Brendel

Ramasamy Viswanathan

mentorship

authenticity

integrity

diversity

mental health