Dr. Akanksha Mehta

What we don't get anywhere else is the networking and the career development and the ability to reach out to somebody who has succeeded in an aspect of their career to ask, how did you do it? And what were the pitfalls? And how could you help me get there too? And that's a void that this society fills that no other subspecialty fills for all of us.

And that, I think, has been the secret sauce to why this organization has been growing exponentially and attracting more and more members from really the full kind of career trajectory of urology, from medical students to residents, but also women who are in practice, early practice for sure, but also mid-career and late career. You know, we're really trying to draw in everybody.

I actually got involved with SWOO because I was invited to speak at one of the SWOO meetings. This was the Scottsdale meeting. And I must have been, you know, five or six years into clinical practice at the time. There were very few women faculty at Emory Urology at the time. So I was really looking for broader mentorship in the urology community.

I didn't know very much about this organization at all other than the fact that it existed. And it ended up being such a fantastic meeting, completely different from any other urologic meeting that I had ever attended. There was so much camaraderie. There was so much support. There was urology, of course, but there was so much more than just urology.

And they happened to announce at the meeting that there was a position open on the board. I spoke with some of the board members about what that is. entailed and ended up applying and joining the board. And it's been a fantastic ride. I mean, the board has changed so much. The organization has changed so much during my time on the board. All for the better.

I think that women urology as a community is growing and SWU is growing as an organization in parallel with that. So it's been really, really wonderful to see that change.

Yeah, my answer would be very similar. You know, I think the success of an organization like SWOO has come from the fact that it has changed a lot since its inception. And the mission and the flavor of the meetings has also changed. The early meetings and probably this is the reason why many of us didn't know about this organization, were focused on, you know, urology as a clinical practice.

And they were themed in the sense that there would be an endourology or a female urology or a infertility sexual medicine focus to the program. And there were tremendous, you know, female urology speakers at those meetings who practiced in that subspecialty. But the flavor of the meetings has changed to focus more on career development.

And that's really what the membership wanted and needed and wasn't getting at the other professional society meetings. We are all members of the AUA or whatever other subspecialty organization that we belong to. And We fill our tank in terms of that subspecialty knowledge at those meetings.

But what we don't get anywhere else is the networking and the career development and the ability to reach out to somebody who has succeeded in an aspect of their career to ask, how did you do it? And what were the pitfalls? And how could you help me get there too? And that's a void that this society fills that no other subspecialty fills for all of us.

And that, I think, has been the secret sauce to why this organization has been growing exponentially and attracting more and more members from really the full kind of career trajectory of urology, from medical students to residents, but also women who are in practice, early practice for sure, but also mid-career and late career. We're really trying to draw in

everybody and have a space where people feel that they have a role, you know, either as a mentor or a mentee or both.

I would echo everything Simone says. And I think as the footprint of the organization has grown, it has become a powerful voice at the national level and on the national scene to advance some of the issues that are important to women urologists. You for AUA-related advocacy issues.

We have a presence at the AUA national meeting, whether it comes to courses or content programming or providing input into what the meeting schedule should look like and what topics should be part of the focus of each annual program. I mean, that's tremendous. I think

That was not always the case, but I see great value in the partnership that the AUA has looked at with our organization, as well as with the other subspecialty societies who started maintaining a speaker database a few years ago. And initially, before the word got out, it was used pretty sporadically. And now I feel like we have a request for the speaker database

Every month, if not more than once every month. So it does get our membership out there as potential speakers, as really leaders in their field, which is, of course, one of the missions of our organization. And I think we do it well.

It's an interesting question because, you know, I think it's sort of a catch-22. You don't realize what's important until you get into that. role and you realize what you're missing. You know, so Simone and I probably both trained at the time when there were even fewer women residents in urology.

And it was sort of a prize commodity having one or two in your program that you could relate to or who understood the struggles you were going through. And now there are so many more, which is wonderful to see. I think when applicants are applying into urology, they may not quite

fully grasp the value of having a program that has a strong representation in terms of women residents or even women faculty, but it does make a difference. And having a forum for residents through SWOO really helps bolster how important that is because sometimes residents will end up at a program, you know, not realizing that they're entering a program where there are very few women colleagues.

And Sewell provides them with a space that they can really pursue all of those questions, concerns, projects, queries that they would have otherwise been able to pursue within their program. But even for those trainees who have strong women representation at their program, I think this is an outlet to them.

Trend

Appearances