Jada Bussey-Jones, MD (Host): Hello. This is Jada Bussey-Jones, the past president of the Society of General Internal Medicine and the host of SGIM's President's podcast. We engage SGIM's former presidents who are leaders across healthcare, public health policy, and academia. As we lead up to the organization's 50th anniversary, we hope to capture insights from our national thought leaders so that our organization, our membership, and healthcare broadly, are stronger positioned to grow, innovate, and meet the challenges of our time. To our listeners, thank you so much for joining us.

Today, i'm excited to have Dr. Giselle Corbie. Dr. Corbie is the Keenan Distinguished Professor of Social Medicine and Medicine, and the Co-Director of the Center for Thriving Communities, and the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Corbie is internationally recognized for her scholarly work on the practical and ethical issues regarding involvement of minorities in research to address racial disparities in health. She has led local, state, and national research and policy efforts to advance health equity. She's effectively developed and conducted research across systems to address health needs of vulnerable populations.

Simultaneously, and I know this from personal experience, she's had a career providing support to predoctoral, postdoctoral faculty trainees. And Dr. Corbie leads programs to help leaders and teams achieve transformational structural change that's needed to advance equity.

For her work, she has received countless awards and recognition. Just a few include the Ned Brooks for Public Service Award, the James E. Bryan Award for Public Service. In addition to being the past president of the Society of General Internal Medicine, the organization honored her with the David E. Rogers Faculty Education Award for reaching the unreached research participation in underserved populations. And in 2018, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine for her groundbreaking contributions toward achieving community and population health equity.

 And so, Giselle, thank you so much, not only for your professional work, including your mentorship of me, but I want to thank you for agreeing to spend some time with me today.

Giselle Corbie, MD: How could I not? I mean, what fun to get to just chit chat with you for a few minutes. I missed that.

Host: It's so good to connect with you today. And I wanted to just start off really with sharing with the audience and with me a little bit more about you. I mean, that introduction talks about a career of impact and leadership, but tell me a little bit about where it all started.

Giselle Corbie, MD: Where did all start? In my President's address, I talked about my parents, who are immigrants to this country from Trinidad, which is right off the coast of Venezuela. So, all of the current political turmoil in that country and activity in that region reverberates, I think, in this country in ways that people may not realize.

My parents came to this country before I was born. They had a daughter, Roxanne, who died at six months. And my dad talks about running into Columbia University into the hospital and they didn't want to take care of her. And him begging, like, "The child is dying. Please take care of her." And they eventually did. She ended up perishing soon after. I think she had a cardiac anomaly from what he describes. But it's those stories, those narratives, family narratives of hope coupled with inequality that I think really set me on the trajectory to where I am today.

Actually, when I was moving—one of the many moves as you do in academic medicine over the years—I think I was moving from my residency program into my first faculty position, I found a paper that I had written as my senior thesis at Cornell on achievement gaps in math and science in high school students. And I was like, "Wow. I guess I've been thinking about this for some time," about sort of how do we ensure that everyone has an opportunity to thrive in this society.

And so, I think their work ethic, their experiences, the family narratives, and The perseverance in the face of that really kind of set me on this path. And I still pinch myself when I hear people like yourself describe what I've achieved, because I'm still just a little girl from Brooklyn, right? Born to immigrant parents who still can't believe the opportunities that I've been able to avail myself of in academic medicine.

Host: Well, I certainly don't look at you that way. I mean, you cast a very long shadow. But it is so wonderful to hear how it started and sort of the story of resilience. And I'm not sure that I knew that ahead of time. But it really does, I think, speak to the impact and trajectory of your career.

So, I am curious though, why in general, internal medicine specifically. So, that sort of explains, you know, maybe a story about healthcare and equity. But why general internal medicine?

Giselle Corbie, MD: So as a medical student, I actually thought I was going to be a surgeon. I loved being in the operating room. I loved working with my hands. But what I realized is that there was no one in my rotation or in the OR that I actually wanted to be like. I didn't have role models that practiced the way I wanted to practice. And in fact, some of the toxicity that I experienced started seeping into the way I was behaving on the wards. And I really didn't like that.

And when I looked around to those role models, they were in internal medicine. And then, during my residency, I had folks at Yale who were amazing clinicians, educators of researchers who were all in the division of general medicine. And that's how I ended up there.

And then, I remember actually somebody—I can't remember at what point in my career—talked about the kinds of physicians you want. You want an aggressive internist and a cautious surgeon. And I felt like that sort of suit my personality, that I am going to go to bat for my patientS. I'm going to look not in a way that's aggressive to them in terms of my interaction, but in the ways in which that I sort of feel that calling to care for the people that entrust their narratives to me. And so, that sort of aggressive way of caring really resonated with me as well.

Host: I love that. And I also love this idea of finding your people, right? Because, as generalists, there are a lot of topical areas that I love throughout medical education. But when I got to internal medicine, I felt like those were my people. So, I hear you on that.

I'd like to narrow the conversation a little bit from general internal medicine to the Society of general internal medicine and sort of how you came to SGIM specifically. You clearly led in a lot of spaces. You know, is there anything that's different about this organization compared to other organizations that you're a part of and sort of what's kept you engaged?

Giselle Corbie, MD: My first meeting, I think, was—I started on the faculty at Emory in '95. And my first meeting was in '96. And, you know, as I said, I was this little girl born to immigrant parents. I didn't know anything about professional societies. The only thing I heard about was the AMA, which didn't feel right, the fit. And for all that the good that it does in the world and in this country, for physicians, it was something that didn't quite resonate at that moment for me.

And the more senior colleagues at Emory and the division were all submitting abstracts and workshops to SGIM. And the person who was a chief resident at Yale before me said, "Join us. Join us in this workshop." It was on sort of ambulatory measures—hypertension, using ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. And I remember distinctly thinking, "I'd never been to a professional meeting in this way before." And when I came to SGIM, you talk about finding your people, it just felt right.

There was a standard of excellence and a collegiality that didn't seem at odds with each other. It seemed actually to be generative. The expectation of sort of very high academic standards, but that we're all in this together and we're here to support each other. So, that's the larger society.

And then, the Minorities in Medicine Interest Group has been an enduring sort of touchstone for me each year. And it also felt like a place, because it's relatively small organizationally compared to other academic professional organizations. It felt like I could know people. And that sort of relational aspect of it resonates deeply for me as well.

Host: You got to know people over many years and rose to lead the organization. And, you know, I was on council for your presidency. And I remember you had so many things, but just a couple of things like changing, spending time, thinking about our values, mission and values, and really pulling back on some of the work that we were doing to begin to think more strategically, which was quite painful and, you know, took a lot of leadership. But I'm wondering if that resonates with you.

So usually, what I ask people is like, is there something that when you reflect on your time as a leader of the organization, something that stands out? And so, you don't have to pick my memories. But I'm just curious what stands out for you?

Giselle Corbie, MD: Yeah, Eric and I, Eric Bass and I would talk about rather than focusing on the curb appeal of the organization, we were focused on like the roof, the wiring, and the plumbing, that nobody would ever really see unless you were in the house and experiencing it, and it was hard. It took a lot of discipline, and not just me, but for council. Because all of us wanted to have that more visible impact on the organization and to support our leadership and in our membership in more visible ways.

And so, it took a lot of discipline. And I'm so grateful for council and for the staff at SGIM that we're willing to push back at times when we strayed, that we're willing to hold those guardrails up for each other, willing to support each other in a really challenging moment.

And so, it was one of the sort of more important leadership lessons about how do you, the change management, ironically, not changing to move towards an innovation, but changing to really ground yourself in strategy and vision. And to have the team that we had was exactly the right group of folks at that moment. Externally, external to council and external to the staff, what I didn't share with folks is that I was constantly getting, "What's your new initiative? What's the new thing that you're going to do? What's the thing you're going to roll out?" And I'm like, "Nothing. In fact, we're going to scale everything back."

Host: Yeah.

Giselle Corbie, MD: So, that was hard as a leader.

Host: But, I mean, it's a lasting legacy. Giselle, I can tell you that I'm on council now, and we still think back to those times that the mission and vision are looked at, examined at every council meeting. But more importantly, as we're doing our annual planning, we are intentionally sort of hearing your voice—speaking your name in many cases in that. So, I think it's a lasting legacy. And even though it was hard at the time, there's much gratitude for that work.

Now, I want to look forward a little bit. So, I asked you to look back. Now, I want you to maybe think about the next 50 years as we're approaching our 50th anniversary.

Giselle Corbie, MD: I was going to say, I don't have 50 more years. I don't have50 years.

Host: But you know, hopefully, the folks who will come behind us, you know, to carry things forward. So if you could offer any advice for the organization, the future leaders of the organization, for what we should be doing or what we should be thinking about, what would you offer?

Giselle Corbie, MD: The resources. Because of the way we budget in SGIM are limited and need to be focused, and need to be aligned strategically. And I believe that—and will always believe actually—investment in, the coming generations and being clear about what it is. We have a particular voice to talk about and to say in academic medicine and where can we add our voice. So, there are places where we must lead. And you yourself have demonstrated through sort of policy advocacy as well as lawsuits identified this is where we need to lead. And we have to be clear about that. We can't do it on everything. We can add our voice to some things and sign on as a supporter, and then be disciplined to say, "This may not be in our wheelhouse right now."

I think that, again, that being sort of clear about strategy is something that the organization of its size with the kind of fully engaged membership that we have is really important. And having those touchstones to understand those issues as they come up, I think, is important and will serve us well.

We could grow, we certainly could grow. And I think we always need to sort of reinvest in our emerging leaders. and that's something that I have tried to do a little in SGIM and have taken it in other ways in my current professional role as Senior Vice provost, really thinking about leadership development. It's a passion project that I have that hopefully will be rolling out some group leadership development coaching. I've been doing executive coaching. And that sort of investment in sort of emerging, rising and established leaders is really where I think SGIM, because of the age of our membership and continued engagement of our senior leaders, really has an opportunity that could be unlocked if we think about how to bring those two together.

Folks, it's a relatively flat organization, and relatively small. And I think that there is an opportunity to think about how we bring the different cohorts together and think about that leadership development, because we're in a moment now where we have a crisis of leadership, not at SGIM, but in our world. And I think the impact, as you talked about casting long shadows, but if we are really investing in the folks and growing those leaders in SGIM, those shadows can be cast all over the country, in ways that we may not be able to capture, but I think we can instigate and stimulate through SGIM.

Host: I love that. I mean, I still hear similar themes that you had during your tenure of sort of refining and thinking intentionally, strategically about where SGIM does best and can have the most impact. But also, what I know you have focused on over the course of your career, which is developing and supporting and growing, you know, the next generation of leaders.

And so, I think that is where SGIM has been successful over time. I mean, because it's been for many of us, the place where our career development has grown and flourished. So, that really resonates with me as well.

I would love to maybe turn to a more fun topic or a less severe topic and just ask you as somebody who's very busy, what are your sources of inspiration and joy? Whether it's inside of your work or outside of your work, how do you sort of—especially with everything that's going on, how do you maintain your sense of joy and purpose?

Giselle Corbie, MD: I had to go back to my why, right? Now, I do less research, more administration, focused again on faculty development. And what I realized was the through line is Simon Sinek's Golden Why that center of sort of not just what you do or how you do it, but why you do it.

I still fundamentally believe in the power and the potential of humans, and I want to be an instrument of catalyzing that potential, whether it's in decreasing barriers to health, to optimal health or ensuring that someone has a path, and the tools and the strategy to lead.

So, how do I maintain purpose? I think, personally—and this may be controversial, I don't know—I personally think that as leaders we need to spend some time in quadrant two, right? If you think about the Eisenhower Matrix, what's important, what's urgent. We're often focused on the quadrant that's important and urgent, but very little time on the important but not urgent. So, taking that time to reflect. For me, it's on a daily basis. It's that quiet time. For me, the best time is that morning time, that stillness to really just be quiet. Just be still. Be intentional about sort of whatever you're spiritual in the most sort of colloquial way of thinking about it, whether it's a connection to nature, to family, to self, to some higher being that you might think that organizes this world that we live in. Finding ways to connect with that source. Exercise movement. Movement can be meditation—often is for me, particularly with walking. I eat lunch as many of us do in front of a computer, but I try to walk immediately after I eat, whether it's just, you know, walking around the quad for five minutes or if I can put the space in there for maybe 30 minutes. So, just trying to get outside for me is important.

I've started painting, watercolor painting. Yeah, I had been wanting to paint for a long time. When I was in Atlanta, I had taken some art class and some pottery classes. And when I moved to North Carolina, I wanted to continue that. But then I had a third child and I had two little ones and it just didn't work out. So recently, I've been trying to get into art classes. Everybody here apparently that's retired, takes art classes, So, it was hard to get in. And I just decided you to go to YouTube art school and just started painting.

Host: I love that.

Giselle Corbie, MD: Yeah. So, that has been a wonderful addition. It's meditative, creative. All of us have that creative piece of us and finding an outlet for that, I think, is generative. So in terms of purpose, I think understanding your why, connecting to something larger than yourself and making space for that on a regular basis. And then, finding joy in your creativity.

Host: I love that. And so as we wrap up, maybe I'll offer you one last opportunity to give any final comments that you have.

Giselle Corbie, MD: Well, of course, I didn't say it. You said it. You said what I would have said. The power of SGIM in terms of this little girl from Brooklyn, finding her people and being able to thrive in a career that I'd never really even knew existed is something that I will be eternally grateful for. I'm actually starting to get all emotional about it. It's like to have that level of support, to have these colleagues and comrades, to have comrades in the struggle for equity, that I can call at any moment in time.

And as part of one of the lightning talks during my presidential meeting, Cross Street talked about holding the note in a choir. And that when you're in the struggle for equity, you can't always strive all the time. You kind of burn out in like a choir, when there's a long note to hold, some people start holding the note, take a breath, other's join in. And that's how choir holds a long note. And having colleagues and comrades to hold that note with me has been one of the greatest gifts in my career. And so, being able to talk with you about that as one of those comrades, Jada has been a gift for me today, and thank you.

Host: Well, you have been a gift for me as I have talked about publicly and privately, and talking about how—now I might get emotional—but how surviving an academic career, I honestly believe would not have been possible, if you had not been at Emory when I came here. You connected me with SGIM as well.

So, I want to say a tremendous thank you gratitude for you joining us today and for everything you do, personally and professionally. So much appreciation. As we wrap up, I also want to say thank you to the SGIM staff, our production team. And also, thank you to our listeners. You have been listening to the SGIM's President's Podcast.

If you like what you heard, please rate us and leave a comment wherever you listen to podcasts as it helps other's to find us. Also, you can look for us on our webpage sgim.org. Thank you so much.