The idea to put this together came from my and my colleagues’ personal and professional struggles in getting promoted.  As a business student in the last year of my Professional MBA, I learned much about leadership and motivation.  Yet, as a program coordinator (also known as a program administrator) at the Tulane School of Medicine, I have seen many of my colleagues demotivated to the point of leaving their jobs.  After contacting a few of them, I learned that one key reason for their departures was the lack of a career ladder.  They felt overworked without the reward of a promotion in the future.  I empathized with them, as my department did not have a structure that would allow me to move up in my career.  So, I decided to find a way to help change this.

 

 

 

When I started my MBA program in 2020, I had the opportunity to participate in the Taylor Center’s “Taylor Your Life 4 Graduate Students” (TYL4Grads) with Professor Julia Lang.  Studying and applying Life Design concepts enabled me to create iterations of my future, allowing me the flexibility to pivot and adapt to my circumstances.  I felt empowered, and I wanted to help empower others. In 2022, I agreed to facilitate a workshop on career planning for the 2023 Annual COMSEP conference in Long Beach, California.  I had a year to research, prepare, and work with other like-minded individuals who would co-facilitate this workshop with me.  I decided to focus on Life Design and share how human-centered design thinking could help my colleagues from other institutions take control of their career journeys.

 

 

 

I reached out to Professor Lang for some much-needed guidance. I interviewed program coordinators who had been promoted to managers in their careers and other program administrators who had worked 15+ years in the same role.  I picked up and re-read Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the book we used for the TYL4Grads workshop.  I practiced design thinking in my own role and helped coordinate meetings through the design thinking process (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test).  It was a lot of work, but I knew that if I immersed myself in the material, giving a workshop at a national conference would not be so hard.

 

 

 

 

After the abstract had been written, submitted, and reviewed, I realized that I might be in need of funding if accepted.  The conference was a Pediatric Medical Education conference, but my workshop was not about Pediatric Medical Education.  So, there was a risk that my department would not be able to pay for some of the fees involved.  On top of that, my wife decided she wanted to come along to visit her family she had not seen in 10+ years.  With all that in mind, I applied for the Changemaker Catalyst Award in the hopes that the funds would help cover any of the flight, hotel, and conference fees I could not pay.

 

 

 

The abstract was approved, and then my Changemaker proposal was also approved.  The stars were lining up, and I dedicated myself to bringing the abstract to life.   Soon, my family and I were flying to California to help make change happen.

 

 

 

 

After our session, faculty who loved the content we covered approached my co-facilitators and me.  They were Conference organizers hoping we could deliver a 4-hour pre-conference session next year!  They followed that up by stating we should make a design thinking theme for the 2024 COMSEP Conference.  What an impact that would make in many medical educators’ and administrators’ lives.

 

 

I am so grateful to the Taylor Center for providing students the opportunity to pursue ventures related to social innovation, social entrepreneurship, design thinking, and changemaking.  I feel like a changemaker, especially after seeing how many program administrators left clutching their odyssey maps and discussing future possibilities at the end of our short 2-hour session.