Dr. Susan Monarez

um, that, you know, have left and, you know, you've seen some of them publicly, um, you know, the, the three senior leaders that left, um, shortly after, after I left, um, Deb, Dan, and Dimitri, um, I have to imagine that, that the other individuals are, are as similarly, uh, dedicated and, and incredibly smart as these three individuals.

And it's, um,

that's going to be a, um, a cascading loss for some period of time.

I mean, again, I don't know all the specifics about what's happened on the personnel side, but I, I know those three individuals and they don't come any smarter.

I mean, they're more dedicated and just, you know, those Debti and I, Demetri, I can call them almost 24 hours a day and probably 24 hours a day if I had to.

And, um,

any question that I had, anything that I needed, they were right there ready to be able to say, well, this is how this works.

How that's how that works, especially in the early days when I was really getting up and running.

Um, I'm, I'm fortunate that I, you know, have the opportunity to still engage with, with the three of them and, um, they continue to inspire me.

And I, and I imagine that the other individuals who have now had to

to leave, um, are, you know, just dedicated public health, uh, you know, public servants who want to continue to contribute.

And my hope is that they can do so in, in some way, um, because I know, you know, even in those meetings that I was having first week where I was just, you know, walking in the, in the halls and in the cafeterias and, you know, even some of our research labs, um,

I know how caring people are that were at CDC.

I know how much they want to contribute.

I know that that is their life's mission.

And yeah, I just, I hope that all of them have an opportunity to find a place where they can continue to live out that selfless service that I know they're so dedicated to.

You know, that, you know, sometimes you just, you can't, you set a goal for yourself.

And in my case, my goal, as you and I talked about,

was to transform this storied agency into the world's most innovative public health service, you know, for domestic and global health.

And sometimes there are factors that are just so much bigger and beyond your control.