What is your role at Yale School of Medicine?
I am the Associate Director of Communications for the Department of Internal Medicine. So essentially, my team and I have the wonderful privilege of sharing all the fantastic things that our faculty and staff do.
Have you been involved in any projects that you are particularly proud of?
I really like the collaborative nature of our team; we work on a lot of things together. Of the four years I've been in this role, I am most proud of our annual report. The book is an impressive collection of the department’s accomplishments. There is so much information to share, it is tough to make the editorial decisions on what to and what not to include.
Why did you decide to work at Yale School of Medicine (YSM)?
My previous position was on the marketing and communications team for Yale New Haven Health (YNHHS). I heard about the communications officer jobs at YSM, so I applied. When I sat down to interview with Jill Max and Nicole Wise, they were hiring for two different roles. They thought Internal Medicine would be the best fit for me, and I agreed. In my previous role, I worked a lot with Internal Medicine at Bridgeport and Greenwich Hospitals, and so that's definitely where my background and interest lie.
How did you become interested in communications?
In high school, I realized that I enjoyed writing. I gravitated towards English and history versus science. I know, it's ironic now. I wanted to be a sports broadcaster going into college, and I ended up studying speech communications with a double minor in public relations and professional writing. Once I started getting into public relations, I loved the coursework.
So that's where I started my career, in public relations. For my first six years out of college I did PR, and then I transitioned into internal communications. At YNHHS, I met a lot of patients and wrote many patient stories. I knew what I wrote could help others, and that gave me a lot of personal fulfillment.
I don’t know if other writers experience this, but sometimes I’ll lay down to go to bed, and then I think of a lede for a story. Or I’ll go for a run, and I’ll be writing a story in my head. Then there are times I’ll pick up my phone and start typing in my notes app. I'm always thinking about different story ideas and ways to showcase our faculty and staff.
I'm thankful that I have so much support from [Dr.] Gary [Desir], Mark [Holter] and Jill [Max], and that we've been able to build a team now. When I started four years ago, it was just me. Now we have a team of wonderful people with different strengths, which has been amazing.
What is the most rewarding part of your work?
That’s hard to quantify, because so much of my work is rewarding. I feel lucky that our faculty and staff trust us to share their stories. I'm also so inspired by our leadership.
I know our work is valued by faculty, staff, and by our leadership. A couple weeks ago, I got a beautiful email from a colleague. I was touched by the fact that he thought to write that note. To me, it shows that the work that we do matters and means something to people. Within our department, there's a culture of kindness, inclusion, and respect that is palpable, and that's awesome.
Where do you see communications for Internal Medicine going in the future?
Everything that we’ve accomplished so far - it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Recently, we started to dig into communicating about all the incredible work that our staff does. And when you have 400+ staff, there's a lot of amazing things to talk about. Our biggest challenge is definitely bandwidth. We just have so much content to write about and to share.
We do our best to be strategic about what we're writing, and where we spend our time. We are also collaborating with other resources like the Office of Communications at the School of Medicine; they're a tremendous team that we work with frequently. We also work with the marketing and communications team for Yale Medicine. We reach across and work with my former colleagues, the YNHHS Marketing & Communications team, and with Yale’s Office of Public Affairs and Communications. So, while we have a small internal team, we have a huge network of people that we interact and collaborate with on many projects.
I also enjoy collaborating with the other department communicators. What a group of superstars! We pick up the phone and bounce ideas off each other. It is such a supportive and motivating environment.
Why do you love working at Yale?
There are so many perks for working at the university of course, like great benefits and talented colleagues. Our faculty and staff are really making a difference in people's lives. Whether it's taking a treatment from the lab to the clinic, they may discover something to help a patient with pulmonary fibrosis, or diabetes, or arthritis; that really makes an impact on people's well-being. I get so much personal fulfillment and inspiration from the work I do every day, which makes Yale the perfect place for me.
What is a fun fact about you?
I have an identical twin sister, who is nine minutes younger. We both started her careers in sports and transitioned into healthcare. After college, we both worked in the Olympics world; I did PR for USA Bobsled & Skeleton, and she worked in marketing at USA Luge. While our careers took different, winding paths, we both now work in healthcare. Everyone asks if we have experienced any weird twin phenomena, and we have! She knew I was in labor with my first child, before we made any phone calls to our family. We have also been known to show up at family events wearing nearly identical outfits.