What is your role in the Yale Department of Internal Medicine?
I serve as the education and fellowship coordinator for Yale Geriatrics and act as the liaison between pre-award and post-award grant managers overseeing T32 funding provided to our research fellows at the Yale Pepper Older Americans Independence Center. I am also the administrative assistant to Thomas Gill, MD.
Why did you decide to work at Yale School of Medicine (YSM)?
When I arrived at Yale in 1994, I worked part time in the Office of Foreign Students and Scholars, now called the Office of International Students and Scholars. Four hours a day of typing visa applications made my eyes cross. Prior to Yale, I was an executive administrative assistant at Subway’s world headquarters, and I was used to high-stress, executive-level work.
After six months at Yale, I began to look at positions in the medical school. I saw the posting for an administrative assistant in geriatric medicine (yes, I had to look up the word “geriatric”) and applied. The position piqued my interest: I was a hospital candy striper in high school and volunteered in a nursing home before that.
The first question I was asked when I interviewed for the Yale Geriatrics position was, “How do you handle stress?”
I answered, “I eat stress for breakfast.”
They replied, “You’re hired.”
My hair was brown then. Now, it’s kind of white. Yay, hair color.
How did you become interested in your line of work?
Growing up, I read medical books because I wanted to be a physicist or physical therapist. Do you remember Psychology Today? That was a monthly subscription in my home.
I did not have the opportunity to go to college. My father passed when I was 11, and his death wrecked my world. I became pregnant at 14, got married, and was a mom at 15. I had to obtain my GED because expectant or teen mothers were not allowed to go to class with other students at that time. There was a school for “wayward” girls on Dixwell Avenue in New Haven back then, but I decided to attend night courses and take the GED the summer I would have graduated from high school.
I include this background to highlight that every job experience I had was “school” for me. When I began working at YSM, I bought a medical dictionary and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy. I read the journal articles the faculty I worked for had published.
When I took charge of the clinical fellowship, I had to immerse myself in the graduate medical education (GME) world. The same was true when it came to formatting and submitting grants. Now in my career, I’ve completed almost every type of NIH grant application. When I started, you used Word Perfect to merge text fields. The process is much more streamlined today.
Have you been involved in any projects you are particularly proud of?
I am particularly proud to have played a key role in the Hospital Elder Life Program dissemination project, the Reynolds Curriculum Project at Yale–Integrating Medicine and Geriatric Education, and the Chief Resident Immersion Training Program in Geriatric Medicine.
I’m a member of the Leadership Council of the American Geriatric Education Administrators and Coordinators Team (AGE-ACT), a subset of the Association of Directors of Geriatric Academic Programs (ADGAP) under the American Geriatrics Society. My involvement with this group has been an awe-inspiring experience and one of the most career-satisfying activities I’ve participated in. Members of AGE-ACT communicate with geriatric fellowship coordinators on the national level, create the coordinator events at the American Geriatrics Society’s national meeting, and mentor new coordinators as they face the challenges of managing a training program.
The Yale Internal Medicine Program Administrators and Coordinators Team is a great group of people who support one another during some of the most stressful times of managing a clinical training program. They inspired me to contact ADGAP to learn more about the role of coordinators in geriatrics.
What is the most rewarding part of your career?
I am proud to be a part of the progress of Yale Geriatrics. When I started in 1995, Geriatrics was a division of General Internal Medicine.
Today, some of the most innovative and sophisticated approaches to caring for, treating, and managing the health of older adults have come from Yale Geriatrics. To watch this unfold during my 29 years with the section has been exciting. We even have a MacArthur Fellow, Mary Tinetti, MD.
Another rewarding piece is standing on the sidelines of my clinical and research trainees’ careers. I’m a cheerleader. Every job obtained, funding opportunity achieved, and paper published brings me a rush of happiness.
What is a fun fact about you?
I have been working in resin, clay, and sugar to make skulls every Halloween (I am pagan) since around 1998. I want to open an Etsy store to sell them when I retire in 2026. I also make lighted resin Christmas trees, snowflakes, and window crystals, and I am going to start making dominos.
Tell us one piece of advice you will never forget.
Never lie; just don’t say everything.
But isn’t that lying by omission?
Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Internal Medicine Section of Geriatrics strives to improve the health of older adults by providing exceptional patient care, training future leaders and innovators in aging, and engaging in cutting-edge research. To learn more about their mission, visit Geriatrics.