Giselle Corbie-Smith & Utibe Essien On Bringing In Voices

“That’s why I do the work that I do, to bring those voices into places where they need to be heard”

Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith is the Kenan Distinguished Professor at University of North Carolina Center for Health Equity Research & is an internationally recognized expert on leadership & health equity. Dr. Utibe Essien is an Assistant Professor of Medicine & a health equity researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

They came together for an incredible discussion on Explore The Space wherein Dr. Essien interviews Dr. Corbie-Smith covering her career arc, insights into merging leadership and health equity, what brings her joy, and her superb podcast “A Different Kind of Leader.”

This is a very special episode, it’s an honor to have these two incredible people on Explore The Space

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Email feedback or ideas to mark@explorethespaceshow.com

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Sponsor: Elevate your expertise with Creighton University’s Healthcare Executive Educational programming. Learn more about Creighton’s Executive MBA and Executive Fellowship programs at www.creighton.edu/CHEE.

Sponsor: Vave Health believes that personal ultrasound is the future of medicine, with an aim to empower both clinicians and patients.  Check out their website for details on their free virtual ultrasound educational events and more, at www.vavehealth.com/live

Key Learnings

1. How Dr. Essien felt meeting Dr. Corbie-Smith for the first time

2. Starting off with a Win

3. Dr. Corbie-Smith’s origins and early career arc

4. Studying health disparities, starting a career in research, and being a Robert Wood Johnson fellow

5. Being a child of immigrants & some wonderful advice from her father

6. The process of integrating leadership development with health equity and launching “A Different Kind of Leader”

7. Deriving motivation from conversation

8. What does the next dream job look like

9. Covid19 through the eyes of a health disparities expert & the critical need to demonstrate trustworthiness for minority communities

10. What brings joy to Dr. Corbie-Smith during these trying days?

Links

Twitter @GCSMD, @DKLeadership @UREssien

A Different Kind of Leader Podcast

Transcript

Mark Shapiro (00:01):

Welcome back to Explore The Space Podcast. I’m your host Mark Shapiro. Let’s start off with a quick, thank you to Laurie Baedke and Creighton University for sponsoring this episode. Creighton University believes in equipping physicians for success in the exam room, the operating room and the boardroom. If you want to increase your business acumen, deepen your leadership knowledge and earn your seat at the table. Creighton’s health care executive education is for you. Specifically tailored to busy physicians our hybrid programs blend the richness of on-campus residencies with the flexibility of online learning. Earn a Creighton University executive MBA degree in 18 months or complete the non-degree executive fellowship in six months, visit www.creighton.edu/CHEE to learn more. Thank you also to Vave Health for sponsoring this episode. Vave believes that personal ultrasound is the future of medicine with an aim to empower both clinicians and patients. From an affordable wireless device to the industry’s first, all inclusive upgrade plan two built in support with Vave Assist.

Mark Shapiro (01:07):

Their mission is to move the needle on ultrasound use in every clinical setting. Find more information online at www.vavehealth.com. That’s V a V E health.com. This is a remarkable episode. I am delighted that it is actually airing when it is airing. This is one that has been in the works for months and through trial and error and wildfires and an election season. We are finally here. Dr. Utibe Essien and Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith take over Explore The Space and I’ll just say it’s just one of those conversations. It is unbelievable. The thing that I liked the most about it, and I certainly don’t want to step on any of this conversation. This is a Titan of medicine being interviewed by someone who is on that same road, but also looks up to them as a Titan of medicine and to just feel that dynamic and to be in that space with

Mark Shapiro (02:03):

Dr. Essien and Dr. Corbie-Smith, it’s really special. I’m beaming, as I say this, this is really wonderful. I am delighted that this episode is coming out. I do obviously want to acknowledge this is the first episode of explore the space that has aired after the election. For those of you who are fans of the show, you know, how much energy our whole Explore The Space universe put into the election season. It’s great that we’re now on the other side of it. I hope that this episode can help to restore a little bit of a sense of normalcy, but obviously to all of you who contributed so much sweat and energy and tears and your own personal treasure and all of those things that help drive towards a result. Thank you to all of those of you in medicine who got engaged and activated for the first time who registered to vote for the first time who maybe helped a colleague get to vote for the first time.

Mark Shapiro (02:53):

Thank you as always to, I would like to invite everyone. Please do take a look at the archive of Explore The Space podcast, www.explorethespaceshow.com. You can find me on social media, I’m on Twitter at @ETSshow, and please feel free to email me anytime, Mark@explorethespaceshow.com. And if you have the opportunity to subscribe to explore the space podcasts, wherever you’d like to download your shows, that really helps us out and definitely leave us a rating and a review. It’s great to be back. It’s great to have another episode up and I just couldn’t be happier with the conversation between two incredible physicians, two extraordinary scientists and two just wonderful people who are creating new roads and conversations like this. Just reframe things in a way that is exciting, refreshing, and challenging all at once. So without further ado, Dr. Utibe Essien and Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith

Utibe Essien (03:49):

Hey everyone. My name is Utibe Essien and I’m an assistant professor of medicine at the university of Pittsburgh. I have to thank Dr. Shapiro for lending us his platform on the Explore The Space podcast to have what is going to be an incredible discussion with one of my favorite people in the medicine, in medicine, probably in the world, Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith. So Dr. Corbie-Smith, for those of you who, for some reason do not know is the Kenan distinguished professor in the UNC university of North Carolina department of social medicine. And she’s the director of their center of health equity research. She has so many accolades and awards, which was some of which we’ll talk through during our time together. But, um, I’ll start with a little story rather than when I first met her back in 2014, I was straight up like I’m meeting Beyonce or Michelle Obama.

Utibe Essien (04:48):

I remember asking my mentor for med school, Dr. Gonzalez like, Oh, can you introduce me? Like, is it okay if I go up there and say hello at this my first society of general internal medicine meeting? And you could see like the crowds lining around here just to talk to her, because again, she’s so incredible. And I feel so grateful that six years after that, here we are chatting it up on a podcast and just finished getting our first paper together accepted and, um, been a long journey for me being this awkward, shy guy who was trying to say hello to, to use. So thank you for taking the time to chat Dr. Corbie-Smith. I am so glad to be able to talk with you. I think one of the universal truth is that if you know that social awkwardness, and it’s just part of being a physician in medicine, it’s like, we all have a little of that and you just got to figure out how to, how to channel through that. I think that’s probably true. That’s very true. So before jumping into your story, cause I got to, I know a little bit about it, but I want the world to hear it as well. Um, I love starting every conversation with my teams and learning about wins, especially during crazy times when there is a lot of sadness in the world. Um, it’s always great to kind of start off with highlight of the week. Favorite moment, uh, inspiring tale, I guess, so to speak from the past week.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (06:09):

Yeah. That’s such a great question. I’m thinking I’m going to incorporate that going forward. So I would, I, if you’ll allow me, I’m going to go back a little bit more than a week to maybe the last two weeks. Um, we just were awarded UNC and Duke, the coordinating center for grants, which are the rapidly accelerating diagnosis for COVID-19 testing and underserved populations. And that feels like, um, a huge win primarily because my collaborators and myself as PIs really decided we, in this coordinating center, we were centering the community and in everything we do and that felt, it feels like it could be potentially really impactful. Um, and so I’m excited to be able to contribute in this way, in this time, in this crazy time to center the lives of individuals who have been historically marginalized in this country. So that feels like a huge win. So I’m excited for it.

Utibe Essien (07:18):

Awesome. That’s so great. Congratulations. And obviously you guys are killing it down in the research triangle, so, um, congrats on co-PIing that work and looking forward to learning more about it. So again, I just, I feel like I’ve heard and know some of this story. You shared a little bit about your journey during your SGM presidential plenary talk last year. Um, reminded me just how connected you and I are in our journeys. And again, would love to kind of have you share a little bit about what brought you to where you are?

Giselle Corbie-Smith (07:50):

Yeah. Um, well, I grew up in Brooklyn, New York and the old Brooklyn, not the new Brooklyn. I wasn’t a target on Atlantic Avenue then. And Bed-Stuy was, was the stuff of movies from spike Lee, right? Yeah. I grew up, I went to a high school that was rated the, had the highest crime rate in New York city of the year. I graduated had the highest reported crime rate because those of us had tilled and believe that others had higher rates, but we were better at reporting it, get skeptic, even men and, you know, went to, went to college and was woefully unprepared. Um, I had made it through, I was telling my kids last night that I made it through just by not being a bad kid, you know, not, not acting out in class and just doing enough work to stay under the radar medical school in the Bronx.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (08:51):

That really was just a pivotal moment for me in terms of seeing well sort of witnessing and living through the HIV, the birth of the HIV epidemic, um, and seeing the toll. It took not just on our patients, but on our colleagues. We had colleagues who became, who were visibly HIV positive, and it was, um, it was just heartbreaking. And I think that my time at Einstein and at Monte just really was, again, one of those inflection points where you make a commitment, even if it’s not completely conscious to the care of, of, of people that are, have been historically marginalized in this country. And, um, did my training at Yale. And I remember being on the wards and being allowed mouth about the care that I saw people getting that I felt wasn’t just, and just, I felt completely compelled to let everybody know this. And one of, one of the attendings pulled me aside and said, you know, you don’t necessarily want to be seen as an angry black woman, which I thought was hilarious because she was the angriest white woman I had ever met.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (10:05):

And I was like, really you’re telling me this. Cause she was, she was just as strident about the inequalities that, that we saw, but I wanted to try to do something more about it. I remember, um, I don’t think I was a chief resident yet. I remember as a resident, Nikki Lori came to give a, um, an invited lectureship and she talked about, um, vulnerability and brace and social class and some of her research that she was doing around Medicaid expansion, um, even back then. And, um, Medi-Cal, I think in California and I was blown away that people could actually study this and could make a career out of an actually could even name what it was, um, because it really wasn’t even a name for health disparities work at that time. Um, and I thought, wow, okay. So this is a possibility. Um, and as a chief resident, I tried to do a little project to uncover what I saw as the bias around amongst my colleagues.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (11:06):

It didn’t go very well, but it definitely pointed me in a direction to that. This is something that could happen. This is something that I could do. I joined the faculty at Emory, um, at Grady, which was just an amazing place. Anybody that works at Grady could be anywhere else, but it’s the commitment to that population that draw people there. Um, and that sort of comradery was really a beautiful incubator for, for some of this work. And I really wanted to, to learn and to study more about the doctor patient relationship and what was happening in that relationship and how that manifested in health inequalities. And I was dissuaded by my colleagues who had more research. I had no research experience at that point who had more research experience and said, you can’t really understand happening. You can’t study it. There’s no way to really get into the clinical encounter to study it.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (11:58):

And I believe them. Um, but at that time, people were, that was right around the time of the NIH revitalization act. And people were really remarkably callous and to a point of being vitriolic in the scientific press and the scientific publications about having to include black and Brown people in their studies. And I was like, well, if they’re going to publish this as must be zero to study, right? I mean, they’re just saying it right out here, it’s all published about, you know, what I saw as sort of looking in hindsight, sort of a racist approach, racism and medicine, really. Um, and so I followed that line. I was able to get grants. I went back to my chair of medicine. Ralph Horowitz up at Yale who told me I needed to get some research training before I left Yale and I didn’t believe him. And then I saw him at a meeting. I think it wasn’t at SGI M meeting. And I said, Ralph, you were so right. Can you help me?

Giselle Corbie-Smith (13:02):

And he’s like, you know, I have, they have these new diversity supplements out. Why don’t we have an ROI? One, why don’t you write one of these and get a diversity supplement? And I, so I got one of those. It took a while because I had no idea what I was doing. And Ralph Ralph and his team was busy, but that was sort of the lifeline, one of the lifelines that were thrown to me to help me on this path. Yeah. And then, so I got the diversity supplement. Then I got a K I had heard about these cases that were new on the scene. And I said, well, this sounds like a goal. Let me get a K out. I knew nothing. I had no idea what it was or what it would entail, but I was like, okay, I’m going to give myself five years to get a K if I don’t get the K, then I’m out.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (13:47):

I obviously I’m not cut out for this. It was. So this was the bargain I made with the universe. Um, and I got it actually on the first try, um, asked her after two years. Yeah. I got the Amos award. Um, after two tries, the first time I shouldn’t have gotten it. I was so glad that they made that decision. The second time I was barely ready, but I had just gotten a K and they said, you know, well, we’d like to fund winners, so yeah, we’ll take you. And thank God they did that family. Um, extended family of Robert Wood Johnson foundation has been just, uh, the connections connection to such a callous word. The, the family that you become a part of in that program is really enduring and some of my best colleagues even to today, 20 years later. So, um, yeah, so that’s how I started, ended up at UNC when I realized that, um, while Emory and Grady worked fabulous for the work that I was doing at the time that I needed an, a bit more infrastructure to support the work ended up in UNC.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (14:49):

And I’ve been here 20 years, which crazy to me, this is longer than it lived in my parents’ house. Kind of nuts for me to take. I’ve been in one place 20 years, but yeah, it’s been a really fantastic place for my work, the department that I’m in, um, I’m in social medicine and also in internal medicine and it’s been just an incredible place, interprofessional interdisciplinary place to situate this work. And it allowed me to go in a variety of directions and really pushed me to think beyond participation in clinical research and to like, what are you going to do about it? Like, yeah, that’s fine. You’re describing this, but like, what’s, what’s, what’s the game plan. And that’s how I ended up in community engaged research. Community-based participatory research, which is mostly what I do, which has been some of the most rewarding and incredible collaborations that I, um, I’ve, I’ve, I feel like I’ve learned, I feel somewhat selfish. I feel like I’ve learned so much more than, than I ever gave in those collaborations.

Utibe Essien (15:53):

Well, that, that journey is I feel like the stuff of what many of us hope our careers will be, that we, you know, hit it on the first, try our K awards and get the AMLs award grant end. But still what I heard you say throughout that it was, you know, my first project didn’t go as well as I have added hope. I probably shouldn’t have gotten my email’s award on the second try. And so, yes, I, uh, hear the amazing success that we all can see and visualize what I also hear this persistence and kind of resilience through, through the work I suspect I can appreciate where that probably came from, but can you share a little bit about what, what keeps, what kept you going in those times when it was like, you know what, this project is terrible. And my chief year, I’m not going down this route, I’m going to retire those patients.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (16:43):

Well, that chief year, I hadn’t, I probably some would say was a very productive year cause I had my first child, but in terms of scholarly productivity, it really sucked. So, you know, I am a child of immigrants and there’s this, my parents are from the Caribbean and there’s, I saw them work. I mean, and my dad had gave each of us a little saying, as we, as we went through our sort of elementary and high school years, and his quote for me was the race is not for the swift, but for the sure. And it was disappointments in high school because I kind of pulled up. It was easy for me. High school was easy because as I said, you know, I just had to stay out of trouble, show up, do some work. And, you know, I was on the path to be valedictorian. And then I kind of just stopped doing work in height in my senior year. And so I missed valedictorian by like a 10th of a point and was really disappointed. And, um, my dad was like the race is not for the swift, but for the sure. So just stay on your path, keep working hard persevere and you’ll be fine. Um, and in fact, he, right. Okay.

Utibe Essien (18:00):

Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I love it

Giselle Corbie-Smith (18:03):

Parents, right? I mean, everybody sees all the, all of these achievements, but it’s the it’s realizing that you have to do it for a purpose. The, for me, the grants and papers were never enough to do the work, the hard work that’s required in academics. So I had to, I literally remember thinking, so like, what’s the deal what’s driving you to do this. And for me, it’s what I realized is that papers and grants are the currency of academia. Um, and it’s the path by which the voices of, um, folks that are underserved or don’t have a voice can be brought into the Academy. Um, and that’s why I do the work that I do is to bring those voices and find a way to bring those voices into places where they need to be heard and can shape organizations. Yeah,

Utibe Essien (18:54):

That’s awesome. Well, one of the other ways that I see you doing it, this work is through your fellowship, through the  Robert Wood Johnson. Can you share a little bit about that experience and what kept you again? It sounds like within that family of scholars.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (19:10):

So, um, I actually, for the first iteration of the clinical scholars program, I was on, I was a faculty member. Well, they had a program at Yale that I kind of knew about, but didn’t really participate in. And then they had, they had a program at UNC and I got to be on the faculty there. Um, and then got, was invited to be on the national advisory committee for the first iteration. And then now are sort of leading the latest iteration of the clinical scholars program, which is more about leadership development, which is a fascinating and exciting space to be in because we’re integrating leadership development in our program with health equity in a very intentional way, um, to build teams of interprofessional leaders who are tackling some of the most challenging problems in our country facing health equity. And so it’s exciting to see these folks coming through the program, um, and even more exciting to see how they’ve already been so impactful. Um, since the beginning of the program,

Utibe Essien (20:22):

Maybe that’s a good segue to chat a little bit about your podcast. Obviously we’re recording on a upon right now. Um, and last year you created this new podcast, A Different Kind of Leader, uh, which I feel like is perfectly embodies your career and what you’ve been to me, at least when I left for you to take us through how does a researcher, physicians, academician full professor mother, um, find the time to a director of a research center, find a time to then create a podcast. And, uh, what was the inspiration for that? And what does leadership kind of more broadly mean to you?

Giselle Corbie-Smith (20:56):

Yeah, thank you for that. So the podcast I’ve been thinking about for about two years before, um, and it became clear to me that my colleagues, particularly people who had faced some adversity in their past, either because of what they look like or who they loved had almost been burnished by those that adversity within the Academy and their luster was just, so it was just remarkable, the talent that I saw around me and this really started in the Amos program, but what I have seen, and this is not to take away from anyone else, but the depth of insight and thoughtfulness for leaders that are black indigenous people of color, um, sexual or gender minorities, um, and is their leadership style and substance is, is there’s a, well there, that’s so deep. And that often time appreciates that diversity in thought diversity in their leadership and the teams that they pulled together in their approach to the complexity, their strategies, and the way that they move in the world.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (22:11):

And I wanted to elevate that. Um, I hadn’t seen that I waited two years because I didn’t know how to start a podcast. Um, and you know, as you said, I had a couple of things that I was working on at the time. Um, and then somebody who had heard me talking about actually one of the, one of the folks in our leadership development programs, like, you know, I’ve been hearing you talk about this for like two years, when are you going to start it? Like, okay, I got called on that. So why don’t I go ahead and get this started? And I’ve been lucky to have an incredible team that I’m working with Sable and Rachel, and also to there hasn’t been a single person that I’ve asked that have said no. And in fact, we had, we kind of got ahead of ourselves and our first season and kind of ran out a slot.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (22:58):

We asked a whole bunch of people thinking that, you know, maybe 50% would say yes, and then it was like, okay. And then COVID happened. And we were like, wait a minute, time out, we all need a break. We had to pump the brakes then. So season two, starting now, we’re super excited to launch. Uh, my hope is folks will listen and be inspired as I am each time I talk with those, with those individuals, you know, at the end of the day, it’s hard sometimes to think about adding that one more thing, but I’m always refreshed and energized and inspired just to talk with folks who are on this leadership journey. The other reason that I did it as a fairly selfish, um, you get to a point, um, within academia, as you sort of ascend that you don’t have these colleagues around you, um, as a racial or ethnic minority there it’s far and between.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (23:46):

And I felt like other people probably were experiencing the same thing. And just being able to hear the stories and to have their experiences validated would be helpful. And then the third reason is because I’ve sat in that chair and looked with awe at folks that seemed to have accomplished so much. And it’s so important when you’re starting out as a leader, um, you’re a barking on your leadership journey to know that it’s possible. Um, and to know that folks have experienced those same bumps and that you can do it. There’s nothing you can do it.

Utibe Essien (24:22):

That’s awesome. And that’s my journey towards medicine was literally one first-year medical student at Einstein as well, who told me, you know, if I can do it and you can too. And I was struggling through my MCATs and freaking out about my, my science GPA and she totally completely motivated me in a way that no one else had before. And I think that sounds like that’s what these conversations aren’t for you as well.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (24:45):

Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s my hope is it certainly works for me. I mean, at the end of these conversations, I’m like, okay. Yeah, that just validated another experience that I’ve had. And my hope is that it also serves to inspire people that might feel that that might need, that may need that in, um, in their lives at that moment in time.

Utibe Essien (25:05):

Yeah. That’s great. So what, what, um, what is the future look like for, for someone who is a full professor? One of the very few black women who have, can claim that in medicine, who is a director, again, like I mentioned as someone recently elected to the national Academy of medicine, like seemingly checking off all the boxes that young, early career, um, academicians have, what does, what does the next dream job look like or dream opportunity look like for you?

Giselle Corbie-Smith (25:36):

Well, that’s a great question. So right now I have the privilege of serving as associate provost for rural initiatives. And, um, it’s, uh, I think an opportunity to, to, I think you’d get to this place where you’re no longer satisfied with the impact that you’re having. And you feel particularly if you’re motivated by the people that you’re, so that you’re hoping this work will serve, that you want to be able to have a bigger impact. And so I’m, I’m excited in this role to be able to sort of support people who are really trying to build partnerships with, at least in North Carolina, some of the most underserved areas in our country. I mean, our, that the place where the geography, where my community collaborators live and work is the buckle of the stroke belt in the Southeast and in a rural, rural part of our state.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (26:31):

And so, um, I feel really privileged to be able to support partnerships around the state and to create an infrastructure, to, to advance their work and to create new partnerships. So that’s, that’s what I’m working on now. You know, leadership development is another way to have that impact supporting leaders so that they can really have a systems view of the work that they’re doing and the opportunities to create systems that are equitable. And so that is another thing that gets me excited is to find ways to support leaders, either through a coach or being a coach or through a program. So, yeah, so those are the things that, that are floating my boat now. And of course the research is always there and my patient, I still see patients on Friday afternoon, you know, for, for me, that’s my first love medicine.

Utibe Essien (27:17):

That’s awesome. That’ll put the full package as some might say. And I guess that, that kind of reminds us that as you mentioned, the research into patients, that we would obviously be remiss to not mention the current moment coordinate quote that people refer to as, as the, um, racial injustice that is occurring around our world. And I think that’s really connected you and I together over the last few months, along with the pandemic of COVID-19, and as I was writing references for a recent paper, I came across your paper from 2003, talking about distrust, race and research in JAMA, and really talking about these issues that are really now coming to the forefront. And so I wonder how you’re thinking about this moment, what it means for health disparities research as a field for early again, early career researchers, and again, for the patients and communities that are being were hard hit back when you’re a training where, when you were writing that paper and continue to be hard hit today.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (28:16):

Yeah, yeah. 2003 seems like a minute ago now. Huh? Yeah. So we’re in, they sent syndemics right. So the COVID 19 pandemic and this racism that’s been in our country is actually the fabric of our country. Um, the syndemics that are coming together and actually creating a sum that’s worse than each of its parts. I think for many people of color, this has been just an incredibly trying time. Um, and it’s exacerbated by the misinformation and the sort of the destruction of trustworthiness within our scientific community, but, but we’re seeing, um, and sort of the politicization of this pandemic, I think has, is going to have far reaching consequences for research beyond, beyond the, the unnecessary deaths and ill and lives that have been lost, um, in, in this country. My worry is that as a scientific community, we’re not yet clear on how and on how to, and how important it is to demonstrate our trustworthiness.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (29:31):

We typically, and one of the things that I would go back now, I guess, 17 years ago, and rewrite that paper is to reorient the work to trustworthiness. And this is, I mean, that paper is a, is a product of growing up in a majority culture in, in, in science. And so it’s oriented towards people of color being distrustful, as opposed to the fact that as a scientific community and some would say, even a medical community that we have not demonstrated our trustworthiness in the way that we need to. It’s completely, I remember a quote from the first set of focus groups that I did at Grady around the Tuskegee syphilis study and participation in research. And this, this brother said, given the way brothers are treated in, in, um, why do what I think that participating in research would lead to anything good for me. And I’m like, it’s completely legitimate for people to not put their trust in an institution that consistently and persistently it’s failing them. And right now the misinformation that we, that it’s being, you know, the misinformation contradictory information that we see in our press is really, isn’t going to be a major challenge. And I think is going to have an enduring impact. Unfortunately.

Utibe Essien (31:00):

Yeah, that’s actually something I’ve never, ever really heard that it’s not just the current moment, which is so powerful. Obviously the, the millions and infected the deaths, but thinking about its impact on research down the line, and this trust is not just affecting us right now and studies today, but in four or five years, when we’re trying to recruit again, like what do those similar conversations look like? And that’s such a critical point to bring up? Well, I always want to end on, on a note of hope. Again, I have been inspired by you over the last six, seven years that I’ve got to know you and follow your career. I’m so fortunate to have you as a mentor, a colleague and friend, I’d love to know what, what is giving you hope in, in these days as again, the pandemics, the syndemics, however, we refer to them as can really, um, start to get to us and affect us. What, what brings that joy? What brings that hope as you go along on the day to day,

Giselle Corbie-Smith (31:55):

Really this is going to sound fairly trite, but it’s my kids. And when I say my kids, I’m lucky enough in this pandemic to have my two nieces with me, as well as two of my son. And they are so savvy, they are remarkable. Um, my oldest son, my middle son is 22, my oldest son’s 25, but he’s, he’s in law school now at an, at Howard. Um, but my 22 year old is here. My 14 year old son is here and my 15 and 17 year old nieces. And when I sit down and hear them talk about politics, about race and racism, they are, I mean, it took me a year. It took me probably 10 years on them to be able to have such confident, sophisticated kinds of conversations. I remember last summer I had them for a little while and, um, I came back from a racial equity training and was talking with them about it.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (32:51):

And I said, you know, they have these for teenagers sometimes too. And they were like, please mom. We want to go, we want to go. I was like, wow. Okay, cool. That’s dope, man. So that gives me hope to know that, that they’re not starting from the place that I started. They’re already leagues ahead of me in terms of the, really the sophisticated way that they think about race and racism, anti-racism politics and policy and the current events. It’s really remarkable. And so that, that gives me hope. Every time we sit down to dinner together, that’s really great. And again, I think parents are saying, well, yes, the younger ones, it’s a little rough with that virtual school life, but to have some of the older ones at home when they would typically be on campus or at anywhere else, uh, has been a blessing. So that’s so wonderful to hear that. And I hope they tune in to this pod to hear their mom. Really thank you again so much Dr. Corbie-Smith for taking the time to connect with us. Thank you, Dr. Shapiro for lending this platform of Explore The Space and I’m really looking forward to connecting again soon. Yeah, this was fun. Thank you. Thank you again for a long day after a long day, feel a lot better now.

Giselle Corbie-Smith (34:13):

Yes. Before I go, how can the rest of folks connect with you? I am episodically active on Twitter, not narrowly as active as you are @GCSMD. Um, I’m also on LinkedIn and much less active there, but that’s a goal. Certainly can listen to A Different Kind of Leadership podcast or follow the podcast on, on Twitter as well. Season two is dropping soon. Um, and, um, we’re really excited about the diversity of disciplines that we are having on the show. Um, branching out beyond medicine, which was sort of heavy in the season one, but really almost all of our colleagues that we’re talking with are centering race and their leadership in this moment in time. So I think is going to be pretty exciting for folks to listen to. Very cool. Thanks again. And we’ll chat again soon. Alrighty. Thank you.

Mark Shapiro (35:12):

My thanks once again to Dr. Essien and Dr. Corbie-Smith for this extraordinary conversation and my deep thanks to both of you for sharing my platform and your incredible expertise, your stories and your insights on explore the space podcast. This is very special and I really hope we get to do it again. Thanks also to Laurie Baedke and Creighton University for sponsoring this episode, learn more about Creighton’s executive MBA and executive fellowship programs at www.creighton.edu/CHEE. And thanks also to Vave Health for sponsoring this episode, that’s Vave with a V. don’t forget to check out their site for details on their free virtual ultrasound educational events, otherwise known as #VaveEduCasts. The next one is coming up this Thursday, November 12th at 3:00 PM, Pacific 6:00 PM Eastern standard. Go to vavehealth.com/live for more details or find a link in the show notes. Thanks to all of you for listening. Thank you so much. Look forward to bringing you more great content. If you enjoyed this episode, please do let me know. Please do find us on Twitter and share your insights there as well. You can email me anytime. Your time listening is o appreciated. Thank you so much. Remember to wear your masks, maintain physical distancing, wash your hands, get your flu shots, take care of yourselves, and we will see you soon. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.

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