Presidential Leadership Scholar Priti Krishtel, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of I-MAK, was recently quoted in a New York Times editorial endorsing the work of her organization, which fights to create a more inclusive, equitable patent system that works for all.
“The patent office holds sway over huge swaths of the U.S. economy,” said Krishtel. “It has the power to shape markets, and just about every industry you can think of, from agriculture to technology, is impacted by its shortcomings.”
This month, the Presidential Leadership Scholars visited the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas. The fourth program module focused on the leadership skill of decision making through the lens of President Bush’s leadership and administration.
Ken Hersh, President and CEO of the Bush Center, and Holly Kuzmich, Executive Director of the Bush Institute, welcomed Scholars to the Bush Center with an overview conversation. After the conversation, they visited the Museum with members of the Bush Administration and Bush Center staff serving as tour guides. This gave Scholars a behind-the-scenes view of the life and presidency of President Bush. Scholars also heard from special guests:
Frances Townsend, Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Chief Compliance Officer, and Corporate Secretary at Activision Blizzard; former U.S. Homeland Security Advisor to President Bush
Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of EmPath; former Secretary of Commerce in the Bush Administration
Dan Bartlett, Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs for Walmart; former Counselor to President Bush
Keith Hennessey, Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business; former Director of the National Economic Council; former Assistant to President Bush for Economic Policy
Nicole Bibbins Sedaca, Executive Vice President at Freedom House; the Kelly and David Pfeil Fellow at the George W. Bush Institute
The Scholars participated in an exercise where they role played as leading White House staff preparing for a presidential briefing. This hands-on experience helped make the connection between understanding and using your own values and priorities to make critical decisions.
In addition, special guests Fran Townsend and Secretary Carlos Gutierrez highlighted the importance of leading with humor, humility, and compassion. They shared their experiences working together and for President Bush.
“He was an extraordinary leader. He let us do our jobs, and he led with an enormous amount of compassion,” said Townsend.
One key point all guest speakers made, including Dan Bartlett, was how President Bush made it easy to work for him because he was clear about his values. Decisions made by President Bush consistently aligned with those values. According to Bartlett, “You have to know your brand, and I knew my brand really well, so that gave me good context for communications.”
The highlight of the module was hearing from President and Mrs. Bush, where it was easy to see what Bartlett meant.
Next, Scholars will travel to Austin in May to visit the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.
To learn more about the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, visit www.presidentialleadershipscholars.org. For updates about the Presidential Leadership Scholars, use #PLScholars or follow @PLSprogram on Twitter and Instagram.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your work and how it relates to your personal leadership project (PLP).
My name is Raymond Tsai, and I am a family medicine physician and clinical informaticist working in California. I provide the medical direction for a private company’s philanthropic mission to improve health and wellness in the rural communities where its agricultural workforce lives and works in Central California. In my role, I oversee six other clinicians, and together we provide primary care across five different sites and a mobile clinic using an interdisciplinary model that includes health coaches, behavioral health, physical wellness, and nutrition. Since we are funded outside of the traditional healthcare system, we have the opportunity to create a system that aims to answer the question: “What should health care look like if its primary objective is only to improve community health?”
I believe an ideal system is one that maximizes interdisciplinary care, embeds itself into the community, invests in social determinants of health, focuses on culturally appropriate care, works towards health equity, and maintains flexibility to adapt to individual patient circumstances. My PLP is directly related to my daily work to provide access to high-quality health care for patients in the traditionally underserved rural communities where the clinics I work at are based. I am doing that by developing a new primary care centered health system that is built on the unique alignment between a self-insured employer, payer, local clinicians, health care entities, and community.
Why do you do this work? What is the influence and inspiration behind it?
Our current U.S. health care system is broken in many ways, but ultimately, we are spending way too much money for a disjointed system that doesn’t actually provide better health outcomes compared to other systems around the world. While I was in medical school, I had a choice to either learn to thrive within our current system or try to be disruptive and change it. I decided on the latter, which is ultimately why I pursued family medicine. I feel strongly that primary care clinicians are critical in improving overall community health because they are uniquely poised to embed themselves into communities to build trust, champion positive lifestyle changes to prevent disease prior to patients showing up sick, advocate against social inequities that impact communities, and have an overall view of the health care landscape to coordinate various stakeholders. The physician Albert Schweitzer, who is an inspirational historical figure, said something that influenced my career choices: “Grow into your ideals so life cannot rob you of them”. I do my current work because it allows me to grow into my ideals around how I can serve communities through primary care.
How did PLS help you develop your PLP?
Learning leadership lessons through various presidential administrations is a unique opportunity and has helped me advance my professional skills, but honestly, I have grown the most from interacting with the other leaders in PLS. Interacting with such a diverse, inspirational, and accomplished group on a nearly daily basis has helped me develop both personally and professionally. My class helps me achieve my PLP all the time because they inspire me to reach for goals that I otherwise would not consider possible.
Which lessons learned during PLS have stayed with you the most?
When the program began, we spent a lot of time talking about communication and being purposeful on how to scaffold conversations to be most productive. That is the lesson that has stayed with me the most throughout PLS, and it is the lesson that I also layer upon the other lessons. For instance, one of the main themes in the program is building strategic partnerships. I now spend a lot of time thinking about how to structure my conversations with my local stakeholders, so I can build the strategic partnerships I need. Even during regular staff meetings or individual check-ins, I have become exceedingly mindful of what a positive outcome would be for each interaction and spend time thinking about how to structure those conversations. Previously, I would think about what I wanted to communicate, whereas now I spend an equal amount of time thinking about how the communication should occur.
What advice do you have for the 2022 Scholars?
My advice is to have no pride in asking for help. I personally get nervous that by sharing my struggles, I am revealing my deficiencies as a leader. I also get a thought in my head that if I am truly a great leader, I would be able to figure out problems on my own. I had a jarring experience earlier this year that showed me how wrong I was on both accounts. I had a leadership challenge that was incredibly complex while also being very emotionally painful, which made it even more difficult to navigate. I reached out to my class and was immediately surrounded by incredible compassion that helped me heal emotionally. I was also presented with many diverse perspectives that helped me see alternatives that I otherwise would have missed. I called it a masterclass via group chat, and I am so thankful I asked for help. I highly encourage everyone to ask for help from their PLS friends when they need it. The depth of experience and varied perspectives I received from my class was incredible in helping me navigate a difficult situation.
Presidential Leadership Scholar Dr. Adeeti Gupta, a board-certified OB-GYN with over a decade of experience, wants her health care brand and personal leadership project, Walk In GYN Care, to be the Starbucks of women’s health – providing standardized, excellent services across the Nation.
The clinics offer same-day, full-service women’s health care to any woman who walks in. The goal is to provide caring, sensitive, and high-quality health care for women across the United States – and to do it quickly.
“My goal is to get women in and out in about an hour,” said Gupta, who founded the care center in 2014.
When Gupta moved to the United States from India in 2004 to practice medicine, she was discouraged to discover that many women in the U.S. were denied immediate, compassionate care and that the quality level and access to care for some in the United States resembled conditions in the Global South.
That’s when Gupta decided to open the first-ever comprehensive walk-in care center for women’s health.
Gupta’s passion for and commitment to women’s health began during her residency in India, when she decided to study obstetrics and gynecology instead of becoming a surgeon.
“Pursuing gynecology was huge for me because that’s when I realized that women are the foundation of society – of any society,” Gupta said. “Their wellness is key to the future.”
Gupta cites the Presidential Leadership Scholars program as a major contribution to her success at Walk In GYN Care. The program enabled her to improve her leadership skills and relationships with her peers in ways that proved critical to the success of her personal leadership project. PLS also influenced the development of her own values and the core values of her organization.
“My core values for my team are heart, humility, excellence, authenticity, respect, and transparency,” Gupta said. “We celebrate a different value every week at our care centers, and it has been awesome.”
And she’s seeing incredible results. Last year, Walk In GYN Care saw about 50,000 patients across its five New York-area locations and identified several hundreds of cases of breast, cervical, and ovarian cancers that may have otherwise gone undetected until they are already advanced.
Demand for the clinics’ high-quality services continues to grow rapidly. This week, just in time for World Health Day, Walk In GYN Care opened its first women’s health care center in Los Angeles. The bicoastal expansion is a major milestone for the organization and in Gupta’s mission.
Several of Gupta’s PLS classmates from 2019 were present at the ribbon-cutting to support and celebrate Gupta and the success of her personal leadership project – illustrating the deep ties maintained within the PLS network long after Scholars complete their six modules.
Before parting, Gupta shared her personal mantra:
“A woman who is well is complete,” she said. “A woman who is well is empowered. A woman who is well is unstoppable. A woman who is well leads the way to a better tomorrow.”
