165. Global Impact & Leadership: ReSurge International's Mission with Claire Lachance

[00:00:00] Welcome to Episode 165 of Girl, Take the Lead, where each week we explore womanhood and leadership. And I'm your host, Yolanda Canny. Today, Claire Lachance, President and CEO of Research International, a pioneering nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding access to life-changing reconstructive

[00:00:30] surgery in low-income countries joins us to talk about research as programs and the positive impact they're making in global communities with life-transforming care. I've been a supporter of Research for over five years, love their mission, capacity-building programs, and funding

[00:00:55] for direct patient care, giving surgeons in low-income regions the tools they need. Did you know that five billion people do not have access to safe, timely, and affordable surgical care worldwide? And every two seconds someone dies from a surgically preventable disease?

[00:01:20] Claire not only tells us about research, but also shares her insights about leadership, which is very cool. Enjoy the listen. Here you go. Well, hi, Claire. Welcome to Girl, Take the Lead. It's so exciting to have you with us.

[00:01:41] Thanks, Yolanda. And you were the organization Research International has my heart. I just love and admire that organization so much. So can't wait to tell our listeners about it and put the spotlight on you guys and your efforts. So why don't we begin first by if you would

[00:02:02] give them a little bit about your background and why you got to research your chief executive officer. And we love you. So thank you, Yolanda. Thank you for the opportunity to do this podcast together. I'm honored and looking forward to the conversation and hopefully

[00:02:22] being of some source of information and inspiration to all the listeners. And my name is Claire Lechance. As you said, I'm the president and chief executive officer of Research International. I'm someone who actually had a more corporate start to my career

[00:02:40] with classic training in finance at MetLife in New York and I went to Harvard Business School after four years at MetLife, continued corporate with AT&T Pacific Bell here in California for

[00:02:54] two years. And then I kind of had an epiphany moment in that job at AT&T where I felt kind of asked myself, what am I doing? Like what am I really, what am I working on? And even

[00:03:09] though I had the more MBA type training, I actually felt of all things it really could be and should be applied in the nonprofit world. And I was serving as the board chair of a women's nonprofit in San Francisco, the women's building at the time.

[00:03:27] And I said, you know, could I do this as my career? And so I hung up my shingle and for over 15 years, I had a strategic planning consulting practice specifically for nonprofits in California. And it was incredible. I worked a lot in social services, education,

[00:03:48] immigration, primarily worked with large community foundations to launch initiatives. It was awesome. And then one day and my own interest area, and I say this for people listening or watching this, I was, you know, I had gone to a conference in an area of great personal

[00:04:07] interest of mine, which is in consciousness research, mind-matter and the mind-matter interaction, which it was with the Institute of Noetic Sciences or IONS as many know it. And I went as just a regular person like going as a member and I will go to this conference.

[00:04:25] And I was so taken by the work, I decided to volunteer my time as a consultant to them, ended up being asked to be on the board. Within a few months, I was the board chair,

[00:04:37] and then about a year later was asked if I'd consider becoming the CEO. And I said, what? This is not on my plan. But it was almost like the same epiphany moment that had happened to me at Pacific Bell. I said, look, if I'm consulting to nonprofits,

[00:04:54] I should probably sit in the CEO seat, right? And so I said yes. And it was this amazing six years with IONS, really leading an organizational, a transformational moment for them

[00:05:09] on many, many levels and loved it, loved the work, still love the work, but then started to feel called to more international service, direct service. And the reason why when I was a recruiter

[00:05:26] reached out to me about Research International, I was immediately called to pay a close attention because Research International is all about life changing reconstructive surgery. And I had had life changing surgery earlier in my life. It was for my eyes. It was not

[00:05:47] reconstructive. It was vision. And I had had, I was born with a condition congenital cataracts that I inherited from my mother who had the same thing. We were, we had both become legally blind by

[00:06:00] about first grade in school. And at, I had to live with the full blown cataract blindness until right before junior year of high school. So it was a long time. It was 10 years. And it

[00:06:14] could have been much worse. My mother, they made her wait till she was in her 30s. But the point is I was able to have surgery then on one of my eyes that, that one eye surgery completely,

[00:06:26] you know, changed a lot of the opportunities out there for me because I was able to be someone who could, who could function, drive, travel. I'm not saying if your vision impaired, you can't,

[00:06:39] but it sure opened up a world for me just to be able to see bright colors to see, to even do this broadcast right now, seeing you. And when the call came from me, from research,

[00:06:53] I said, you know, I think that's what I need to do is to bring transformational surgery to people in low income countries as a bit of almost like a bracketing of my own life experience. So that's,

[00:07:08] I know a long answer, but I, it's all about saying yes to opportunities that maybe you weren't quite planning on. Right. And I also think it sounds like you were listening to your heart along the way

[00:07:23] to and your passion, which always I think is a good strategy in our career development. Yeah, you'll hear, I think maybe we can talk more about it later, but I'm a big student of intuition, consciousness, you know, listening to heart, you know, your somatics and

[00:07:43] your body listening to what's coming in. However that means to a person. And it wasn't each of those cases, one of those moments. And you can't say no to those. Yes. So recently, Research International was acknowledged by the United Nations Commission on the status of women by

[00:08:08] being a panel member. So congratulations to the organization, but I think it'd be great for listeners to hear a little bit about maybe what that panel was like and what are some things that went on there.

[00:08:22] Oh, thanks, Yo. It was a very special moment. We think it was the first time in research, international history organizations over 50 years old, but we're pretty confident it was the first time to have that kind of recognition. And what that was was we had applied recently,

[00:08:41] Research and this is in our program area led by our chief program officer Natalie Myers had published an article on the disparate impact of burns on women and girls in low and middle income countries. And which I can talk about a little bit more, because oftentimes in developed

[00:09:05] countries like the like the United States, a lot of burns in adults in particular men there in due to the nature of certain type of jobs. Well, in low and middle income countries, it's often

[00:09:20] women and girls do greatly in part to the open cooking fires that are still used in many countries. And sadly, violence against women, including acid burns. I say that because what happened with the panel is we applied to present this article, this research

[00:09:42] to as part of the Commission on the status of women, which is an annual convening at the United Nations. And we applied for it. We said we'd like to have a panel. We were accepted and not

[00:09:56] only were we accepted, we were one of the few that didn't have to combine the topics with another. A lot of a lot of organizations had to kind of figure out a way to combine their two topics.

[00:10:07] They allowed us to present only on that topic. And we put together an incredible panel. And on that panel, in addition to our chief program officer was a woman, Natalia Ponce de Leon from Columbia, who is very well known in that country and has

[00:10:29] as a survivor of an acid burn, a terrible, terrible incident where a disgruntled boyfriend attacked her, had her attacked with the acid. And she's undergone over 40 surgeries. And it's, she is a beautiful person in powerful ways. She was one of the examples

[00:10:53] of what occurs in the countries that we serve. And what we did is it's raising awareness of the issue of burns and the disparate impact. And we could talk right of a whole session just about

[00:11:07] that. But what was so exciting is that the panel itself, it brought attention to the issue and it brought attention to our broader work, which is around the full, the whole full scope of reconstructive, which is really all about returning the normal functionality

[00:11:29] of your body after a traumatic accident, a congenital condition, cancer and so forth. It's our medical officer, Dr. Jim Chang, who is the head of plastic surgery at Stanford. He loves to say from top to toe. So it could be missing digits, you know, fingers, toes.

[00:11:52] About half of our cases are burn contractures. When in many of the countries there is no treatment after a burn. There's no surgical ability to do the acute care. So what happens is often the burn, the scarring creates a contracture which locks in your hands,

[00:12:13] locks in your arms and all it takes, and I shouldn't say all it takes, but there are surgical procedures we all would take for granted to call unlock the contracture. And that restores functioning. So at the UN, we were able to talk with other nonprofits working to expand,

[00:12:35] you know, be able to partner together and say, how could we provide broadened, because we also do cleft lip and palate, but how could we bring the more complex surgical expertise to the other partners we're working with in the countries?

[00:12:52] I think one of the wonderful things that you do in the organization is that you are training others in the local market to do this on their own. And I think that's a lot of your point of difference versus other nonprofits that just go in and leave.

[00:13:14] Right? That's our huge, thank you for mentioning that, Yoh. That is our major differentiator, is the commitment to building local capacity in the countries we serve. So it's true that the organization started as, what one would think of as the classical trips, the trips to go conduct

[00:13:38] the surgeries. And I just wanted presents that just three days ago, the founder of our organization, Dr. Donald Lau passed away. And after a very full and accomplished life, you know, when he started the organization, it was to bring mission trips.

[00:13:57] And it was in the past, I would say, 10 plus years and accelerated by COVID, of course, was this aha of, you know, if we could train local surgeons and keep them trained on the latest state-of-the-art practices from Stanford, from Johns Hopkins, Harvard,

[00:14:20] Northwestern and so forth. If we're able to do that, and they can train residents, surgical residents in their respective hospitals and in their communities to do this, the impact is exponential.

[00:14:37] And if I may, we also, we're on a roll lately. There's a lot of releases of studies finished a multi-year study that actually quantifies as best as possible that potential impact

[00:14:55] where for each, we call them a super trainer. So the head of our hub site in Nepal, for instance, Dr. Shankar Rai or the head of our emerging hub in Uganda, Dr. Rosa Lenio, just as two examples,

[00:15:10] Dr. Hao in Vietnam, if they take this on and begin to train locally and within their regions, we're looking at a 400,000 case impact. Isn't that 400,000? We know that over five billion people in the world, and the World Health Organization is saying it's now even higher, lack access to

[00:15:35] surgery. Like the things we just take for granted, five billion people do not have access to safe, affordable quality surgery. We, even if we take a small percentage of that and say, okay, five percent of that or 10 percent is reconstructive, the millions and millions of people who need

[00:15:58] the case. So if we can build off that exponential impact, we feel that's where research can make the impact that we really are striving to achieve. It's so amazing. I'm so glad you have those

[00:16:12] metrics to help people understand really what the organization is doing. Now you've been there about a year. A year and seven months. Not that I'm counting you. A year and seven months. But given your time there, what has moved you? What stories have touched your heart

[00:16:34] and that we could share with our listeners? Well, it's an incredible organization. And I think what first, the fact of how relatively small we are for the work that we do, we're currently a budget of five million, which for a nonprofit is on the smaller side.

[00:16:54] But yet the in kind, which is not in that number, the in kind contribution of these unbelievably committed volunteers, the medical volunteers who give up vacation time to either go as, to go do the training as surgeons, to go as nurses, as anesthesiologists,

[00:17:17] physical therapists. So there's a team, it's called our surgical team. They're doing it on their own time. They're going and this is the, it's very moving. So I had my first trip last February

[00:17:30] to Nepal and Vietnam. And that was where, oh, I mean, when I think about what moves you, it was in that experience. And if I could just describe the way that a visit with a surgical

[00:17:45] team goes, this is the training teams, you always start with what's called clinic day, where all these patients who have been waiting for who knows how long to be seen to be potentially treated, they're waiting in these hallways and lobbies. And it's not like,

[00:18:06] it's not like our hospitals. I mean, these are under resource settings. And they've come in many cases have traveled multiple days, either on little motor, on motorbike, on multiple buses, walking, they get there. And in the case of Vietnam, it was mostly

[00:18:24] children we were seeing, because that trip was on the maxiophacial. And these, a lot of the children had what's called a part syndrome where the skull fuses too early after birth. So the skull is

[00:18:39] supposed to grow with the child when it fuses too soon. The growing brain has no place to go. So it creates a whole lot of very complicated challenges. The trip I was observing was the

[00:18:54] training trip to show in Hanoi, the Vietnamese team how to do these surgeries and the tools that they need. So to see the parents, I think a moving, it was to see the mother turn over her child

[00:19:08] to our team. This little one year old who's about to have brain or basically skull surgery. That was, and that was the first surgery I observed. So the joke on the team was, oh, the new CEO should see a surgery. Maybe she'll see a cleft lip or something.

[00:19:29] Brain surgery. Oh my gosh. Well, you know, that's what it is. And I think to me, the moving, it was that watching the parents entrust their child. And the night,

[00:19:43] the wonderful thing is I got to see the same child and the mother a few days later before we left town. And thankfully, the surgery was a success and it was just so amazing. I mean, obviously,

[00:19:57] they're going to, it's something that has to be monitored and there are repeat surgeries needed. But that first phase was successful. The other moving part was a piece was when I,

[00:20:08] we went from Vietnam to Nepal to one of Reserja's very strong hub sites in Kathmandu led by Dr. Shankar Rai. And when I was telling you about the burn contractures, the story that I'll never

[00:20:24] forget was this, he was about 25 year old young man came in with his brother and the 25 year had, they had driven on motorbike. I don't know how far they were all covered in dust and

[00:20:39] his hands had both been burned so badly they were contracted he and it was an accident. He worked in a garage, an industrial like repairing engines and such and there had been an explosion. His hands were damaged so badly he couldn't take care of himself.

[00:20:58] He couldn't work and he didn't, he barely, he just barely spoke on his behalf. It was like he just was there. He's like, can you, you know, the brother is trying to advocate for him.

[00:21:12] And he was one of the cases that was accepted to be worked on that week for him to be treated. And it was successful. And again, that's another one where the contractures much can happen in progress quickly but requiring multiple surgeries. But that was an incredibly

[00:21:31] complex case and to know that he's going to be able to go back to work, he's not going to be dependent on his brother so his brother can live his life and go back to work. It's that,

[00:21:44] it really is the multiplier effect. You could see it in that like right there in the case of the baby in Vietnam, you know that child's going to be able to

[00:21:56] go on and go to school and have a full life with the 25 year old in Nepal knowing he can go back to work. His brother can. And so we're really, it was very moving, Yo. It was, it was, so

[00:22:12] thank you for letting me talk about that. Well, that's, I mean, I'm moved too by listening to you and I'm sure our listeners are, I can't imagine not being able to use your hands.

[00:22:25] I know if you really think about even spend 10 minutes just thinking about that one thing. Yeah, so grateful for our use. So one of my favorite programs in addition to just your mission and everything you're doing is the powers program and what it's doing to really

[00:22:45] empower women. Oh, you got to talk about that one. Okay. I know the powers. I feel you're asking me what inspires me earlier too about there. I love, I love that we have such rich programs that and so the powers program stands for the pioneering

[00:23:02] women in reconstructive surgery. And the program is now I think seven years old. And it was done. This is a program in which the skincare company, Skinceuticals, which is a L'Oreal company, Skinceuticals approached research international about partnering in some capacity.

[00:23:25] They were looking for a brand, a real brand partnership. And the pioneer, the, the pioneering woman in reconstructive surgery program came out of that. What that is is it is a cohort

[00:23:38] program. It's a two year program in which six to seven women are selected from the, from the countries we serve. So whether it's in low and middle income countries in Southeast Asia, or for instance in Nepal, in Africa, and in Latin America, Central America. And

[00:24:01] the women are their general, their generalists, general surgeons who show an interest in reconstructive. And because in many countries, there are in many cases not a single reconstructive surgery or act or it's some wild figure like one per million people. When you think about how

[00:24:22] much access we have to plastic and reconstructive surgery in the US. So the point was to help number one meet the need of we need more reconstructive surgeons. Here's a way to develop

[00:24:36] young emerging surgeons. And also to address the gender gap, the huge gender gap in the medical profession. It's already challenging even in our own country. When you think about what women go through to make, you know, through the medical school experience and afterward imagine

[00:24:56] in some of the countries we serve. But there's recent research coming out too that shows that the effect, the benefit of the women's surgeons on their patients often exceeds the men for whatever reason that is. And that's something that we want to talk about because

[00:25:19] the recovery it takes from these surgeries. So the program where it's in a two year cohort, the women are not only provided actual training, they're providing leadership skills. So I know anyone listening to this knows it's not just the subject matter knowledge you need, but

[00:25:38] how do you stand in your self confidence? How do you handle those tough political interpersonal situations? So the program does both and it's incredible. I got to meet the powers women in my first month at research at Skinceutical's L'Oreal headquarters

[00:26:00] in New York and it was so amazing, yeah. And their biggest thing was, yeah, how to navigate from a career perspective, how to stand in their power. And so we're now moving into our fourth

[00:26:16] cohort coming up launching in our new fiscal year, which is in July. So we'll be inviting in our next, our fourth cohort. So there's other aspects of the program like

[00:26:27] scholarships, but it's just, it is what you say it is. It's it, you see the videos on our website, we're going to be, there'll be another video coming out. It's, it is inspiring.

[00:26:43] So one of the things that I always like to encourage my listeners is to kind of celebrate their accomplishments. And recently you have achieved a great accomplishment. And I think you want to tell our listeners a little bit about the International Leadership

[00:27:04] Association. Oh, gosh, thank you, yo. I do. Yes. I mean, literally just even as we were preparing for this podcast, I just found out that I have been appointed to the board of directors of the International Leadership Association, effective in July and

[00:27:25] the ILA we like to call it. But for anyone, if you, if you look up the International Leadership Association, what's awesome about it is that it is a forum for bringing together the latest research on leadership, emerging trends and convening thought leaders in leadership

[00:27:47] and practitioners. But the part that makes it super special and really got me inspired to become, I've been involved with ILA now for, for three years, is that it's very much focused on a

[00:28:01] just and compassionate society, and really looks at its impact accord really measures and maps its impact against the United Nations development goals. So the whole sustainable, the focus on sustainability that includes by the way medical outcomes. And so for me, I'm a I'm passionate

[00:28:26] about the study of leadership and the exploration of leadership. And to be able to, to bring research, the work of research, which is around localization, I mean, the whole commitment to breaking the colonial patterns of flying in, flying out, for instance, but instead really

[00:28:50] investing locally, making sure local decision makers are driving our priorities in those countries. That's an example of what the International Leadership Association might be talking about and how we do that more. But it's fabulous. I'm thrilled. I I'm so excited because it brings

[00:29:10] together for me all these interests that I have. Yeah. And when we were talking, you referred to the notion of wisdom leader. I just think that's so interesting. Can you talk a little bit

[00:29:26] more about that? Well, I've been this is even going back to my consulting days. Very interested in how to bring in how to really generate inspired leadership. And at one in my role at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which studies very much the the interconnected field. And also

[00:29:51] where is our inner knowing coming from or where's our inner wisdom coming from? I started to see like how to look at to be a wisdom leader or to is where do you tap into your inner wisdom?

[00:30:05] So we were telling that story of how I was saying yes to those opportunities that seemed to be coming my way. Well, for me, you know, I could for me it was listening to my inner wisdom. Everyone has a different interpretation from it could be a religious interpretation

[00:30:21] or spiritual or it could even be scientific. I'm fascinated by that intersection of spirituality and science. And how does it apply to leadership? So how are you tuning in? And again, some people will call it all intuition to but what are you picking up on in meetings or

[00:30:45] in one on ones? What is going on that could lead to break the to breakthrough? And I think that's and what it means to is that it's not always it's not easy. It sometimes

[00:31:02] the theory behind no, Wettick leadership and the no Wettick no Wettick meaning this greater in interconnected whole the news. And a Greek interpretation of that word meeting your inner knowing is it's of it is of a good purpose. And so if you believe that what you're picking

[00:31:24] up on is of a good purpose, and you have to listen to it. And sometimes that's hard. Sometimes that means changes or tackling a situation. That's not easy. But often when you call and you say look

[00:31:36] like in running a nonprofit, I say well, I'm only doing this because I'm trying to help more people. So sometimes that's a way to say may my may my inner wisdom, may my guides however you want

[00:31:50] to look at it be there for me when I take this action or have a tough conversation. There's a lot more I could say on this, you know, it's like it's I just got to say though, how lucky.

[00:32:06] Well, it's nothing is really like I mean, I always kind of look at it like it's the flow and but to have you in the position of leadership for the organization. Oh my God,

[00:32:19] it is special. So not very many leaders I that I have ever worked with, except one, Mary had had perspective like this and could lift people and encourage people to find their inner in ourselves and to and to work with

[00:32:43] that. So I think that is a gift that you're bringing. So I thank you for that. You're being generous. You're being very generous. Yeah, my pleasure. If I may say this, I and I have run

[00:32:57] workshops on this and I'm I something I'm passionate about. I think it exists for a lot of people. It's that they're not comfortable bringing it out in their day to day leadership.

[00:33:09] Yeah. And that's often what comes out is to say, Oh, how can I do that? So I mean, to be candid when I arrived at research, I had to tone it down a little bit like just and I've been eating it out

[00:33:23] gradually but it's in you know, just things like how we would organize a staff retreat. And I think people people know but you have to almost come out of the closet about it.

[00:33:36] You know, it's like, I get it. It's it's but it seems that the awareness of it and it's attractive. Oh, you're drawn to it, you know, and you want more of it. And so anyway,

[00:33:54] that's nice. Well, thank you. I wanted to be of service and I'm thrilled that I have such support at research, not just with the staff but with the board to pursue them to bring research out

[00:34:07] via these leadership channels. It's it's important. And we're very fortunate to have our chief program officer Natalie Myers, who is very gifted and deeply experienced in global health. So we're both like coming at this about how how do more people learn about this important work

[00:34:28] in the world. And if my angle of that is to also inspire people in their leadership great. So that makes me happy. Well, you can let us do this to the next question, which would be

[00:34:40] how can our listeners support research international? Well, thanks, Yo. I would first say we have fantastic marketing materials to just incredible inspiring videos. Learn about us. Number one, I would say please learn, learn about us research.org res urge research.org. Learn about us. I think

[00:35:09] that's learn about us and be informed and spread the word so we have incredible social media channels. But the videos are chief marketing officer on a Santos is just incredibly gifted. Yeah, we're so fortunate and marketing to be professional to her. I say I know I feel

[00:35:33] in so too that I'd say learn about us. Obviously we are we are entirely funded by private dollars. We do not receive to date government funding, we're working on that. Unfortunately, surgery does not tend to be funded much in the world of global health. It's really interesting.

[00:35:55] Tends to be infectious disease diseases and such. But we are working on it and we might have a breakthrough to support our local hubs. But yes, funding of any level is deeply appreciated.

[00:36:09] Read you know in kind. I mean if this work speaks to you and you want to get involved in a capacity doesn't even have to be as a medical professional. Yo, you have helped us. Right. So it's been a real pleasure. So see this we I think bringing

[00:36:28] bringing expertise. I love the expression of of time, time, treasure and time, time, treasure and ties of talent. Yeah, there's there's four of them. And you know we forgot to talk about and I don't want to go very far without talking about the strategy and the

[00:36:47] exciting strategy hub coming up. Oh, yo, you know what's so funny? We're we're well it's because we're on such a roll. It's fun. We're in this conversation. I know it's a time there's a lot

[00:36:59] of firsts. There's a lot of big happening right now at research. It's exciting. But one of the big things which we were just we just had our board meeting two days ago is we will be unveiling

[00:37:11] our new strategic plan over the next couple months. It'll take effect in our new fiscal year beginning July 1st. It is it is meant to be a breakthrough plan. And it really goes back to the study that I referenced that was led by our medical officer Jim Chang,

[00:37:31] a former fellow to research law Dr. Lawrence Kai and Natalie Myers as our chief program officer that 400,000 impact figure the only the way to activate it is we have got to strengthen our

[00:37:48] hub sites in the countries we serve. So we are looking with the strategic plan to further Nepal cap the Kathmandu site is currently our strongest site even that needs more supports than we will

[00:38:03] be in the middle of Vietnam in a city called Hue, we will be developing a hub there where we have an incredible humanitarian surgeon Dr. Ho who is committed that that's what it takes yo it

[00:38:17] takes a it has to be someone committed to serving the people. And so in each of these countries where and then in Uganda, I mentioned Dr. Rose Alenio we have Dr. Safe Nuru in Tanzania. We have

[00:38:32] a possible hub in Ethiopia around micro surgery and then in potentially an Ecuador in where we're as a base for that region. So the strategic plan is around, you know, strengthening our training treatment and sustaining our hubs. That is how we're structured and the only way

[00:38:58] we can activate that is by increasing awareness of research. So we're going to be doing a major public relations campaign. Oh, it's so exciting. I wish I can't I can't give it away yet. But we

[00:39:10] were very fortunate that the very well known ad advertising agency Ogilvy took us on pro bono this past year. We have a public awareness campaign. And we will also be really looking for resources on both the individual giving level and institutional giving that there is

[00:39:32] no reason why we should not have more financial support. The return on investment is so high. And we've got a supercharged board right now and a supercharged staff and passionate people in

[00:39:46] our community like yourself. So we kind of feel the time is now to activate this and thank you for bringing that up. I don't even want to say the name of the strategic plan because it's

[00:39:57] giving away it's giving away the public relations are awareness campaign, but it's going to be exciting. And I'll say we're going to launch it publicly at our gala in San Francisco on October

[00:40:11] 5th. Okay, so everybody October 5th. Yes. So I think you've given our younger generations a lot of good advice throughout this episode. So what maybe we can just skip to the last question I asked people that come on the show. What would you tell your 20 something self today?

[00:40:38] Oh my gosh, well, it's funny. Someone recently said to me, gee, it's too bad. You weren't in this flow earlier in your career. In other words, I always I loved my career and it was

[00:40:58] awesome and it moved and I it was it's been great. I wish I had been more confident earlier and not in an arrogant way. But if I could go back and talk to myself like I'll

[00:41:10] give an example going to Harvard Business School you know, not an easy place. And I went in the mid 90s and at that time, only I think 20% of the student body was female. It's definitely gone up. But it was you know, it's a tough environment. It's

[00:41:29] you're graded based on how you debate in class primarily. And for me, I tended to be on the quieter side believe it or not. I've come out of my shell since then. But I think that's

[00:41:41] what helped it. I used to get so stressed out. And a lot of us did in those classes. Every day you had to be on you didn't know if you're going to get the cold call.

[00:41:51] But that I wish I could go back and say enjoy like be you're there like just enjoy it and by relaxing a little bit, you'll actually do better. And and so I would I would say that that I it's not again, it's not an arrogance thing. It's about

[00:42:12] being comfortable in your own skin and knowing what's uniquely you and saying yeah, you know, and so I think that would have maybe accelerated this this flow, you know, this this ability

[00:42:29] to be in a full like joyful pursuit of one's career. It's not it's not just a job. It's it's it's this interwoven life, which I think you could probably identify with, you know yourself. It's like it's we don't we're not just doing this to earn a paycheck.

[00:42:49] It's like no, it's our full expression in our life. So I would love to have told myself that just relax. Yeah, it all I guess for me to like it'll all unfold exactly as it should and when it

[00:43:04] should you know that there isn't a time I used to think oh I've got to do this by this time. You know, yeah, yes, just pushing myself really hard where if we just sort of lean back into

[00:43:19] it and have that confidence that you talked about that it's all going to work out just fine and it's going to be exactly as it should. But I'm sure you're saying that I yeah very it's

[00:43:32] it's I think it's something to it's funny because it's a great question to reflect on for us. And also if someone's listening to this and they are, you know in the third in the 20s 30s is

[00:43:45] yeah to be in that trust. I always believe if you're putting the right intentions out and I would say yeah to follow now I want you know to follow to follow that intuition that calling

[00:43:58] but to maybe relax into it. So thank you. It's a really good question. Yeah, thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to tell our listeners before we close today? I just want I think I would just say the thank you for

[00:44:15] thank you for being interested and to enjoy whatever you're learning about our organization Research International that these are real lives being impacted every day. And I would just say you know any support of any type because each life that's changed those couple examples I shared

[00:44:42] imagine that multiplied by hundreds of thousands. I'd also say let's continue this conversation on the leadership journey because it's it's an unfolding and so I look forward to being able to to talk again and and also hear people's I love hearing people's perspective so I would put

[00:45:04] an invitation out you know that people to connect with me with you know on LinkedIn we have really strong social media channels at Research but I really welcome feedback and ideas and thank you for giving me this opportunity. Thank you for joining us.

[00:45:25] Listeners I'll have all the links in the show notes for you so that you can take clear up on her offer which I think is just so generous thank you for that and thank you for being here.

[00:45:38] Thank you so much Yo very much appreciate it. Thank you listeners. Thank you. Thank you for listening today and we sure hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did please leave a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts tell a friend about us join our public Facebook

[00:46:01] group girl take the lead or visit our website girl take the lead pod.com we also have a YouTube channel where your subscription would be appreciated once you're on YouTube search at girl take the

[00:46:15] lead and we've recently expanded to YouTube music where you can find a video of this episode. Here are three takeaways from our episode with Claire one a key point of difference for research international is their ability to strengthen surgical systems in low income countries

[00:46:41] and the multiplier effect that creates two the powers program advances first generation women constructive surgeons in low income countries across the world this program aims to tackle the gender gap in global surgery by providing surgical training leadership development and mentorship for women surgeons in those countries.

[00:47:11] Three we can all be wisdom leaders by listening to our inner selves and our intuition our next episode will be a sound bite building on our episode today with Claire. She mentioned her passion for noetic sciences and I didn't know anything about that

[00:47:32] so you know me I had to go do some research on my own to learn more and I can be interested to learn more about the interplay between scientific knowledge and inner knowing. So good so please join us again and talk to you soon bye.