Mother knows best, as the adage goes. Danielle Lane, MD, HS ’02, connected with both her future husband and career, thanks to having a mother who enrolled her in educational summer programs during her college years.
The summer after her sophomore year at McGill University, she participated in the Health Careers Enhancement Program for Minorities. That experience inspired Lane to change her major from engineering to physiology and to pursue a career in medicine.
A Focus on Fertility
At the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Lane’s interest in women’s health crystallized. Consequently, she applied for an OB-GYN residency. Fortuitously, she and her husband, also a physician, couples matched at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) for their postgraduate training.
Lane notes that during her residency at YSM, contraception was a hot topic in women’s health and heavily promoted with patients. However, many women in New Haven were having babies not because they lacked access to birth control but because they wanted to have babies. At the same time, many other women were not yet ready to start a family. They had delayed childbearing because they felt they were too young, were still in school, or had a career. She says, “Most of the people who were ending up in the fertility clinic were these women. They would show up and would need assistance to conceive. I was also seeing this in many of my friends and colleagues.”
She notes, “I was very attracted to the surgical aspect of fertility work as well as the patient population that we were treating. It was at Yale that I decided that I wanted to do fertility work, and I was pretty passionate about it.” Lane’s next step was a reproductive endocrinology and infertility (REI) fellowship at UCSF.
Fond Recollections
A few things stand out to Lane from her time at YSM. First, the mentorship. Among those who influenced Lane were Hugh Taylor, MD, chair, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, who “was an amazing role model and mentor” and helped her secure her fellowship position, and Irvin Jones, MD, PhD, the only African American doctor in the REI division. He was a role model whom Lane looked to as she advanced toward a subspecialty populated by very few African Americans. She notes, “Even now there are only about 40 Black REIs in the whole country.” Joshua Copel, MD, was another supportive faculty member, who helped her stay positive during a stressful fellowship application process.
Reflecting on her YSM training, Lane points to the impact it had on her. She says, “Yale taught me how to take care of patients. I still take care of patients, providing compassionate, quality care, the way I learned at Yale.”
Private Practice Journey
The road to Lane’s fertility practice began with a challenge: landing her first job in REI, a field far from diverse. She recalls, “I was not going to get a job in an REI private practice because those practices weren’t taking care of diverse patients back then. The patient population was very narrow, and they saw their need for physicians narrowly too. I interviewed everywhere, and nobody offered me a job.” Lane ultimately landed a position as a doctor with Kaiser Permanente. But after 18 months, she realized it was not a good fit for her.
In 2009, she founded her own practice in the Bay Area, Lane Fertility Institute. Offering comprehensive fertility services, the boutique practice helps intended parents build families and specializes in donor egg and surrogacy work.
Reaching Diverse Populations
In her work, Lane has struck a comfortable balance between patient care and business activities. “I do a lot of the marketing,” she says, “which, strangely, I enjoy.” During the pandemic, her children introduced her to TikTok and inspired her to try it out with videos of her own. One drew over half a million views and another has 4.1 million views. “What I realized then was that there was a handful of fertility doctors on TikTok, but none of them were of color. And I realized that many viewers resonate with people who look and feel like them. This is why representation matters.”
She concluded that TikTok and other social media platforms could be extremely useful for reaching diverse populations—African American, Hispanic, and others. Because securing diverse egg donors was a big challenge, Lane initially focused her social media on donor recruitment. This effort helped her build the most diverse donor database in the country. Now, much of her messaging also helps to educate women about fertility.
Fulfilling Career
Lane finds tremendous fulfillment in helping aspiring parents start and grow families, and coaching the next generation of REI talent.
Pointing to a few achievements, Lane says she is proud that she is still in business and is among the few African Americans who are forging their paths in REI. She also finds great satisfaction in seeing patients semimonthly at the Marin Community Clinic, where she helps close financial and knowledge gaps surrounding fertility care, and in mentoring pre-health students whom she hires each year. “They are smart and hardworking. When they walk out the door, they are strong, because fertility patients can be intense. To get to impact that many lives is fulfilling, and I am grateful for the opportunity to serve in these ways,” says Lane.