That's a Wrap!: 2024 Weitzman Institute Symposium

Hard to believe that our 2024 #WeitzmanSymposium is done. Grateful to our incredible lineup of speakers Donald Warne, Hafeezah Muhammad, Sonja Diaz, Christopher J. King, PhD, FACHE, Carlos Stringer Smith DDS MDiv, Dr. Deann Butler MHA, MBA, Rashmi R. Rao, Abner Mason, Irene Dankwa-Mullan MD MPH, Sahee Abdelmomin, Binoy Bhansali, Annita Hetoevehotohke'e Lucchesi, for sharing their individual and collective brilliance, candor, and vulnerability with us.

An excerpt from my opening remarks:

This year’s Weitzman Institute Symposium theme, “Representation Matters” is one that resonates professionally, and is at the same time, profoundly personal.

As a child, I remember every Election Day, waking up before sunrise to the sound of my father getting ready to head to the polling station. He approached the act with such confidence and eagerness, consistently wanting to be one of the first ones to cast his vote. I remember asking him, still groggy-eyed though with great curiosity, why is it so important for you to vote? To which he replied, “This is how I make my voice heard. You were born with this right, though generations before you, including your ancestors, fought, and nearly died for this right.” My father, an immigrant from the Philippines of Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese descent, shared with me that he had to go through a long process to become a U.S. citizen, and that both of my grandfathers fought for the U.S. in World War II when the Philippines was an American commonwealth so that one day, the vision of voting becoming my birthright, would be a reality.

With time, through my own personal and professional experiences, the importance of representation beyond the electoral season and why representation matters in everyday life, became increasingly apparent.

I recall my white coat ceremony, looking at the portraits of past presidents of my medical school, and not seeing anyone who looked like me. With the exception of a few, the same applied to the tenured faculty there, as well as in my graduate school. To this day, only 5.5% of full-time faculty at medical schools are Hispanic, Latino or of Spanish origin, 3.6% Black or African American, and less than 1% are American Indian or Alaska Native.

I remember entering the workforce, and experiencing what it means to be overqualified and underrepresented, or not represented at all at the decision-making table. To this day, while the U.S. workforce is diverse with 37% of the U.S. workforce being Asian, Black, and/or Hispanic/Latino, and nearly half female, just 23% of C-suite positions are held by people of color, and 28% by women.?

I recall purchasing our first home and getting interesting looks from a few neighbors, some outright questioning with suspicion if we lived in the neighborhood. The reality is that the history of racist housing policies such a redlining has prevented generations of communities of color from purchasing homes and increasing wealth over generations.

I think about my female friends and colleagues in the entrepreneurial space who are making waves in healthcare tech and innovation, some of whom you’ll hear from today. The reality is that women-owned businesses receive just 1.9% of VC funding; the numbers are even more startling for women of color, LGBTQ+ women, immigrant women, and first-generation female entrepreneurs.

It is these experiences and the experiences of the communities I represent, that I take into my leadership of the Weitzman Institute.

I am grateful to our Founders, Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter, APRN, PHD, FAAN , whose powerful opening remarks you heard earlier, for the opportunity to lead groundbreaking work at the Weitzman Institute while still staying grounded in our shared mission and vision.

We stand on the shoulders of Reba Moses, Gerry Weitzman, and the rest of our ancestors who have paved the way for us to continue the fight for representation.

I am proud of the team and the culture we have built at the Weitzman Institute, and the richness and diversity of disciplines, backgrounds, and lived experiences that are represented throughout our staff, including at the leadership level. Each day, we at the Weitzman Institute intentionally strive to ensure representation is embodied in our work: in our research efforts—by having patients and community members serve as Co-PIs on our research projects and including them throughout all stages of the research process from conceptualization of the research questions to dissemination of key findings; in our educational offerings—by ensuring diverse patients are represented in the case studies and curriculum presented; in our policy work, by leveraging our thought leadership and national platform to shed light on pressing issues of representation including gender-affirming care, immigrant and refugee health, and maternal mortality of Black women.

While we have made great strides at the Weitzman Institute in embodying representation matters in our workforce, culture, and the work we do, we know we still have a ways to go so that tomorrow, we don’t look back at today regrettably at the untapped brilliance of those who could have and would have solved our deepest societal challenges.

Our annual Symposium, the Weitzman Institute’s flagship event, encapsulates our vision for the future not only of the Institute, though also of healthcare and society as a whole, in which representation matters is not just a hashtag, rather normalized in all processes and outcomes.

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