Greetings, colleagues, and thank you for participating in the AAD Career Launch Boot Camp series. I'm honored to be a part of this series and talk about my own personal journey that led me to my current leadership roles. Like most of us, I'm not comfortable talking about my leadership bio, but it's probably important to outline where I have landed to provide some context for my journey story. I'm Bruce Broad, and I've served as a leader of several of the Academy's committees, councils, and task force. I'm the current chair of the AADA Council on Government Affairs and Health Policy, and I'm a board elect to the Academy's Board of Directors. I've also served as president of my state dermatology society in Pennsylvania, as well as for the American Contact Dermatitis Society. I was chair of the State Board of Medicine in Pennsylvania, and I currently have a leadership role with the ACCME. It's a national accrediting body where I chair a committee that accredits all the CME providers in the U.S. And I'm also a practicing dermatologist. I'm on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where I'm director of the Patch Test Clinic, and I serve in a leadership role for continuing medical education at the Perlman School of Medicine at UPenn. My goal with this presentation is to share my experience and provide some tips to help you with your leadership journey. I'm showing this photo on the first slide to help erase any doubt that one person's leadership does not make a difference. At the end of the presentation, I'll provide you with a leadership checklist where you can adapt some of the qualities that you think are important. It's adapted from one of the professors I had at Wharton, Michael Youseem, who teaches leadership at the Wharton School. So getting back to this slide, these are photos of eight individuals. They were towering figures of the last century. Eleanor Roosevelt, going left to right on the top row, Mahatma Gandhi, Alfred Sloan of General Motors fame, and Mother Teresa. And then on the lower left, lower row, we see Nelson Mandela, we see Martin Luther King, Margaret Thatcher, who was the British Prime Minister, and then over to the far right is George Marshall. He was the top US uniformed officer during World War II. Later his name ended up on a plan, the Marshall Plan, that he authored as Secretary of State. So one way to think about how to evolve your leadership skills along the way is to look at these eight people and think, what do they have in common? What exactly did Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa and Margaret Thatcher and Martin Luther King all have in common? And it's pretty quickly you can see if we were here in dialogue, I wish we were, we might start saying, well, they had a lot of courage. They were very articulate speakers, and they all had a vision. And those are important answers. And as I go along, I'll ask you to think of some others, some other qualities that you think they all share. These are qualities that are transcendent, that all individuals who have a great impact seem to be using them. And that's kind of a sign that, hey, you know, we don't really have to invent the wheel here. Maybe we ought to get a sense of those qualities, maybe put a name to them, and then think about how we can bring them to ourselves as we go on in our careers. I mean, we can only aspire to have qualities of these great leaders, but there's also a lot we can learn from them as well as other great leaders in history. Much of my personal journey has a lot to do with serendipity, although I think in a sense serendipity is the intersection of hard work and opportunity. You may hear people talk about the arc of a career as shown on the left slide. In reality, our careers often take many twists and turns, and it's really how we navigate that and adapt to that and seize those opportunities. That's what really determines our future. So I grew up in the Philly suburbs. My father went to college on the GI Bill to become a chemical engineer after he served in World War II. And my mom, she was a public school teacher and a guidance counselor. I never wanted for anything. We were hardly rich, but comfortable. As the youngest of three brothers, I had two older brothers. They both went to college. I was expected to go to college. I was expected to gain skills and earn a living. And since I had good grades, I was good in science and math. It meant med school, law school, maybe business school, something like Wharton, or becoming an engineer. And I always looked up to both brothers. One of my older brothers was pre-med. He's now an ophthalmologist, and I think that influenced me. So I chose the path to med school, honorable profession, something that had a very important and positive mission, involved helping others. And so I went to med school. Looking back, I realized I had white male privilege, and that many others growing up when I did, they unfortunately may not have had these same opportunities. Becoming a dermatologist for me was also serendipitous. When I was in med school, I was planning a career in radiology. And my now wife, she was my med school classmate at the time when I was a third-year medical student, alerted me in my third year of med school that I could sign up for a dermatology elective, and the rest is history. And I changed my mind. I didn't go into radiology. I went into dermatology. Early on, I was enamored with the political process, although I put it on the back burner in med school and in residency. But going back, when I was in high school, I was a beat reporter for the high school newspaper. And I interviewed, I was assigned to interview my local U.S. congressman, Bob Edgar was his name. How neat is that? And I interviewed him about various issues of importance at the time for the school newspaper. And I just thought that was amazing that I could just call a member of Congress and was granted an interview. I'm not sure that would happen nowadays. I also had a friend in college, a poli-sci major who worked for the Democratic Party, and she invited me to go to the DNC in New York the summer of 1980. It was the Carter-Reagan election. And again, how cool that was to be on the floor of the convention center, Madison Square Garden, hobnobbing with our leaders. My mom was also somewhat of a political activist, so that motivated me as well. So in this slide here, I want to stress the importance of mentorship, because I think having good mentors and having mentorship opens the path towards leadership. Without my great mentors, I would not have had the same fulfilling career path. So after my fifth year in private practice, I was working as a dermatologist. I got the bug to do something about indoor tanning. I saw a lot of patients, young patients, many women who were frequent users of tanning salons with melanoma. I didn't really formulate a plan. I had a narrow vision that we need to sort of ban this unhealthy practice. And that, again, awakened the political activism side of me. And that led me to my state dermatology society, where primarily one individual who had been working on the issue for a few years, a dermatologist, partnered with me and mentored me on a lot of the basics, how a bill is passed in the law, and eventually passed the torch to me. And this is where I learned some of the basics of advocacy. This was my initial entryway into a lot of the very rewarding roles I've had with the academy on government affairs and health policy. And mentorship, for me, really taught me a lot of practical skills, skills that helped me in a lot of my leadership roles. So my work with the state Derm Society and indoor tanning led me to the academy, got me involved in a task force in the academy, and that task force was focused on state society development and advocacy. That's where I met a very important mentor in my life. He's still a mentor to me today, Michael Zinola. He's a dermatologist in Nashville, Tennessee. He was, at the time, this is going back almost 15 to 20 years, he was the legislative advocacy task force for the academy. He took me under his wing, and I became the deputy chair of that task force. And from Michael, I learned very basic but important skills. Much of that learning came from observing his behavior. So practical things, just how to plan and set an agenda, how to engage members of the committee. I also learned from him the importance of running an efficient meeting and valuing the time of the committee members. Michael would actually establish on the agenda a schedule of time for the amount of each agenda item that he would be running. And he would, when he reached that time limit, he politely, diplomatically moved on to the next agenda item. And I tried to preserve that skill in my leadership roles. He also taught me early on how to summarize my thoughts throughout a meeting and use that to synthesize an action plan. And also just creating a careful log of minutes from each meeting to share with committee members so they continue to have a sense of what we accomplished. And my feeling is it's okay to find a manner who's pretty similar to what you are, one who has shared values and interests. Because in doing that, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You have somebody preceding you who's already done a great job. Michael was a great role model in this capacity. We had a lot of shared values, and he had a successful template for his leadership journey. And I modeled much of mine after that. He made me realize also that what may have seemed to be really lofty aspirational goals were really achievable. It's sort of like, if you can see it, you can be it. And Michael became the chair of the Tennessee State Medical Board. And through that, I saw the value of that. And I ended up becoming the chair of the State Medical Board in Pennsylvania. It took some networking and built off of some of the interactions I had with the State Derm Society and the State Medical Society. And my roles on the ACCME, too, were in large part following Michael Zanoli's role in that organization. I think another important point I want to bring out is to don't fear leaving your comfort zone. Step outside of it. I think it's important. It's difficult at times to take initiative and accept these challenges. But that was really important for me in my development, and I encourage you to consider the same. I like to espouse the Yogi Berra philosophy, which is, when I see a fork in the road, I take it. So after a few years for me working on legislation in my state society, I became an officer, secretary, treasurer, and then I got nominated for president of the State Derm Society and found myself at the age of 39. I didn't know if I realized how young I was at the time, although I think I did. I was pretty nervous. I was hesitant to accept that because I didn't have much confidence in my ability to lead anything. I was busy. I was establishing my own practice in dermatology. I was trying to be a good parent for my children, but I accepted the challenge, and I learned a great deal in that role. Did I make mistakes? Yes, and I think it's important to address mistakes. Failure is difficult. It's uncomfortable, but I think it's important in your trajectory towards leadership and in leadership to address failure, whatever it is. Whether it's a business idea that doesn't take off, a new hire that doesn't work out, failures happen. As a leader, you need to understand that. I like to sort of use the term confident humility. I didn't coin the term. Adam Grant did, but confident humility is being secure enough in your own expertise and strengths to admit your ignorance and weaknesses. The author of this book called Think Again, Adam stated that confidence without humility breeds blind arrogance, but humility without confidence yields debilitating doubt. I think it's important to have both. Confident humility allows you to believe in yourself while questioning your strategies. I also want to make the point of never stop learning. I mean, a lot of this is informal. I think physicians are natural, lifelong learners. For me, later in life, when I wanted to improve my skills to be able to expand opportunities, even outside of direct patient care, I enrolled and completed a master's degree at Penn in healthcare innovation. I thought that was, for me, that was very important in my development. Don't be afraid to think about opportunities like that as well. And in this slide, it's sort of a reminder and maybe to absolve. I think a lot of us feel that in our career paths that we're being selfish, that we're not taking care of other really important people in our lives. But this slide, I want to remind you, is that when we have consistent values in our careers, that creates good role modeling for those around us, whether it's our children or our friends or other significant others, you know, just using children as the example. I think it's okay to try to excel in leadership. Acting as a strong role model and a mentor is a really good thing for me as a parent, as a caregiver. I felt like I had an important role to play in my children's own development, their moral development. My children, you know, they watch me. They watch me to learn what's right and wrong. And I felt that in these roles, it actually helped because they could observe me being a strong role model for others. And I think that helped my children as well learn the importance of good ethical values and good behaviors, humility, honesty, fairness, justice, being respectful to others, how to care for oneself, how to be critical of oneself, and how to make contributions to the community. And I think it helped them to be ethical community members and good citizens. So that takes me back to our leaders checklist. And again, this is adopted from Michael Usim, a Wharton professor who teaches leadership. And this is a long laundry list of qualities that are important for leadership. And I won't go through all of them. I think the first one and the last one are really important. So the first one is articulate a vision. So no matter what type of leadership opportunity you have or what role you're in, I think it's important to articulate a vision to those who you are helping along, to those who are leading. So when people come to a job, maybe it doesn't seem like the most interesting job. It's more though, I think, and you'll get more out of those who are working with you if they see that greater vision. They're not just there doing a task, collecting a paycheck. So for instance, a dermatology practice, the vision might be that we want to provide the best dermatologic care for those in our community. And so articulating that I think can be very, very motivating. And then the last point is really important too, which is to place common interests first. So I found in leadership, it's not about me, but it's about others. I like to say that leaders eat last. Everyone else should eat first. And I think in this list, there are other important characteristics to think about. And you have to kind of make your own leaders checklist. Hopefully, this will provide you with somewhat of a starting point. Another important bullet point here is to honor the room. So this is about credit. So a good leader can make all the difference in the world between a good outcome and a not so good outcome. But a good leader also assigns credit to others first and foremost, rather than assigning credit to whoever that leader is. So I hope this has been helpful for you. 15 minutes, 20 minutes is too short. So I urge you, please, do not hesitate to reach out to me. Contact me with any thoughts, questions, or feedback. It's been a pleasure to do this lecture and be part of this series. Thank you very much.

leadership

courage

mentorship

challenges

failure

vision