Greetings on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Highlights of the week were our kickoff planning meetings on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for the CCSG Site Visit on September 12. We began to update the Lombardi Strategic Plan to align with the submitted competitive renewal, and then considered the vignettes we want to highlight in each speaker’s presentation and on the posters. We also defined our preferred slide template. All in all, it was a lot of hard work, but it was immensely gratifying and very productive.
Then, on Friday it was announced that Dr. Ed Healton will be stepping down in about one year, with plans to launch a search for his successor in the coming weeks. I will share my thoughts in more detail in the future, but I do have a few preliminary comments.
At times, it can be easy to underestimate the body of work of a senior leader, but Ed has proven to be a highly effective, impactful leader in his eight years as EVP of GUMC. Nobody gets to decide what their legacies will be, but Ed will long be remembered, and I hope with appreciation, for the effective and sensitive way he led GUMC through the pandemic, which posed unprecedented challenges to academic medicine that linger to this day. That alone would be enough, but there is more. Under his leadership the School of Nursing & Health Studies was reimagined as distinct schools of Health and Nursing, and two terrific new leaders were identified and recruited for them. Outstanding new leaders were recruited for the School of Medicine, and for Biomedical Graduate Education and Research. Ed has supported the continued development of Georgetown Lombardi, has nurtured GUMC’s strategic relationship with MedStar Health, and has created what I believe to be unprecedented strategic alignments of GUMC with other GU campuses. To be sure, much work remains to be done, but a lot has been accomplished. Congratulations are in order.
If there is one thing I know about Ed, it’s that he will not go on cruise control. I have urged all of us to “run through the tape” as we approach our CCSG site visit. I have no doubt that Ed will be sprinting beside us, and then all the way through June 2024.
Stay safe and be well.
Lou
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