Proposed Path to Pursuit of Happiness + Fulfillment: Professional & Personal
Dear Younger Me,
I am writing this letter in response to an influx of requests for help and time. Since I can’t respond fully to all these requests; I humbly share what I wish I had told my younger self. Do not take this as gospel and do not take yourself too seriously. We all need many role models and important relationships, yet the one with ourselves is perhaps the most important of all. Try to make it as strong as possible, and leave room for it to grow. Do not take this letter as some kind of decree from someone who has “made it.” I don’t see myself that way at all. Though I’m growing, having fun, and building many people. This letter stems from that in its aim to serve as a bank of resources for any professionals, including women.
I recommend your top priority become to build yours and others’ self esteem. Ever since you focused on this maniacally, almost daily; you’ve been having so much more fun and it’s been so much easier to tune out the meanies and sociopaths. Commit to not be an arse yourself.
No one will believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself. We will all have tough and challenging times. There have been days (weeks, months, years?) that I’ve been the only person that believed in myself. The days that I didn’t, I had a small circle who could alternate being that one person. All you need is one person that believes in you and sometimes that has to be you. Cherish and pour into those that play that role in your life whether it is colleagues, advisors, investors, relatives, close friends, faculty etc.
Today, I will leave this checklist as a placeholder and come back to it periodically and link resources and build it out into a series of blogs.
🎯 You can and should have aspirational role models you don’t personally know and can learn about by their example. Mine is Lisa Su, CEO at AMD, we’ve never met yet she changed my life in the way described in the linked post above.
This aim should be mixed with mentors and friends with whom you share close bonds.
How to attract these friends and mentors?
✅ Learn how to network effectively with powerful people
✅ Vision define & communicate
✅ Values define & communicate
✅ Vows define & communicate [1]
I have met many of my closest friends through volunteering and board roles. In your 20’s, you might choose to volunteer as much as you can inside and outside of industry. This is to learn as much as you can and meet as many people as possible. As you enter your 30’s, it becomes important to be surgically precise with strategic alignment towards your professional and personal goals and ruthlessly prioritize and cut to manage time, energy, focus, and performance.
🎯 Consistency; if you are on time and prepared 99.5 % of the time, no one will squawk about the occasional traffic jam that makes you late.
🎯 Boundaries; identify toxic people and surgically remove them when you can. Help people understand that time is scarce and valuable and ask them to help you use yours wisely by staying focused on meaningful, not random connections. I love this video on managing the tapestry of individuals like navigating a universe of stars and darkness.
🎯 Get a sponsor: How to Get a Sponsor
🎯 Be a sponsor
🎯 Be a learnaholic
🎯 You are a product of your network; make sure you trust and respect those in it and that it’s not an echo chamber.
🎯 No one did anything great alone; balance being as selective as possible with suspending judgment and giving people room to evolve including yourself.
🎯 Have fun with the people you respect and admire, think about ways to contribute to and build community; develop interests including non work related ones that you can share with people who light you up. This paradoxically makes you more fun to be around and therefore more efficient since people will want to work with you.
🎯 Push yourself athletically and physically if you can for energy and health.
🎯 Learn how to eat a mediterranean diet for energy and health.
🎯 Never stop learning etiquette, deploy it when necessary for access and connectivity.
Tools & resources:
Healthcare technology careers:
Early career and shifts within a tech driven economy:
Some of my favorite career tips. What I aim to impart is:
1) The courage to be disliked is critical
2) The criticality of allies and community
3) Seeing yourself clearly, your gaps, strengths but going ahead and believing in yourself anyway
4) Highly recommend this Harvard CS50 free coding class. It’s not that everyone is going to code; it’s the confidence one gains understanding it. Free, enroll here https://www.edx.org/learn/computer-science/harvard-university-cs50-s-introduction-to-computer-science
5) Interested in healthcare technology? Read about dozens of successful women in this groundbreaking and honest book on navigating a career in the field: https://www.amazon.com/Navigating-Successful-Healthcare-Information-Technology/dp/1032432799
Professional Development and Interviewing Skills:
- Free presentation gym Thursdays: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-presentation-gym-6886344377527095296/
- First time job seeker guide comes highly recommended: https://www.amazon.com/Knock-Secrets-Strategies-First-Time-Seekers/dp/1440536783/ref=sr_1_1?
- Pivots and workforce reentry after kids: https://www.rebootaccel.com/workshops-for-individuals
Thanks to Susan Solinksy for pulling the first 7 items above out of me:
Acknowledgments
The Trustworthy Technology and Innovation in Healthcare Book Series consortium where I convene many of the people I respect and want to learn from in pursuing my vision of transforming healthcare technology. I’m one of the luckiest people in the world to have so many world class, preeminent role models and mentors; I am deeply grateful to each and every one of you. It’s a long list and one of my personal goals is to find ways to honor each one of you including my talent and leadership coaches Karen Jaw Madson, Anthony Lee, Tom Bondi, and Wim Roelandts.
Keep growing, building, and making things happen!
Sherri Douville is CEO at Medigram, the Mobile Medicine company driving safety, efficiency, and profitability for health systems as well as editor for our 4th book on AI and Cybersecurity for Healthcare Boards (forthcoming). She is series editor with top healthcare IT academic publisher, Taylor & Francis based in the U.K. She is known for aligning engineering, IT, physician leaders, informatics, and legal across the industry. The contributing team of teams in the book series comprise top experts across all relevant required domains to make healthcare IT work in the age of AI and Cybersecurity. It is recognized as the top ecosystem of the best of the best experts, comprising over 100 coauthors and editorial reviewers. She has taught accredited CME, CPE for CISSP three times, and continues to provide leadership as co-chair of trust for the industry’s IEEE/UL P2933 full stack technical standard. She also served on the healthcare CIO leadership group, CHIME certification committee for cybersecurity. She is honored to have given dozens of talks, keynotes, guest lectures, and podcasts including for multiple professional societies such as the American Board of AI in Medicine, ABAIM, to governments worldwide, the Ivy league and internationally. She launched and taught corporate board education for privacy and cybersecurity at Santa Clara University from which she has a B.S. degree in Combined Sciences. She has also completed certificates in AI and ML through MIT in the R programming language. She believes that by building the leaders and networks that the industry needs; we can deliver rapid technology enabled transformation through groundbreaking companies such as Medigram. This drives everything she does.
