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Chapter 1: What inspired Dr. Jennifer Miles-Thomas to pursue a career in medicine?
If this is real and you are giving me protective time to actually look into how we can change health care, we will make mistakes. Everyone's building it as the bus is moving.
And what about that decision point for health care? Was there another catalyst that sort of led you to that path?
As a Black female urologist, I have certain patients who aren't Black females that reach out to see me because they say... I think you probably went through and had to study harder than others. When you see opportunities to allow those who don't look like you to also experience and promote them, I've found in business, the best boardroom is the most diverse.
Welcome to Digital Voices, where healthcare and life science leaders explore the real work behind transformation. This podcast is about people, leadership, and the conversations that move healthcare forward. Now your host, Ed Marks.
Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. So glad that you're here with us. I know you have a lot of different choices, but you're here and we're going to make it worth your while because I have the amazing Dr. Jennifer Miles-Thomas. Jennifer, welcome to Digital Voices.
Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited to have you because you're a great leader. You're a great person. You have so much insight. And I know everyone is going to love hearing what you have to say. And we first met maybe a year ago or so. And we were at the Innovation Center at Northwestern. And it was just an amazing experience. And we got to meet you. And that was maybe the best part of the whole thing.
And so I was like, man, I just loved everything that I was hearing from you and learning from you. I was like, I have to have you at some day, at some point on the podcast. But Jennifer, the most important question we ask is the very first one. And that is what songs are on your playlist?
Ooh, so I'm a bit of a diverse listener. I'm really into Teddy Swims right now. So Lose Control. There's something about just the tone of his voice, the beat. It's like almost like country touring R&B put together. One of my favorite songs is the best part from her and Daniel Caesar. And there's something just about the love and the connection in that song.
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Chapter 2: How did attending MIT change Jennifer's perspective on healthcare?
So they decided to come to Cleveland. Well, lo and behold, the first winter came and they were like, where am I? Like, we're not doing this. So the whole family picked up and moved to Virginia for a more moderate kind of weather lifestyle. So I went to high school and college in Virginia, med school in Chicago, and then residency and fellowship at Hopkins in Baltimore.
So it was an interesting kind of Midwest East Coast culture. But I also always knew that, I mean, I wanted to be married. I wanted to have kids. I wanted that balance in life. So I got married after my first year of med school. We have three kids. My husband's a basketball coach. So our life is literally crazy. So we're here and we're there. Our kids learn to microwave food very early.
I want to say in the first like five years of their lives, they had five different memes and people would just quit on us. And like in the morning I had to be somewhere at 630 and my husband be like, well, I have a game. And I'd be like, where are the kids? truly like reality show, but I'd probably be on Cinemax. So I probably wouldn't be in the role that we really showed our life.
After that, I mean, I really realized I liked a lot of different things. I spent most of my life training to be this surgeon, this doctor, but I was like, there's other things than other parts of my brain that just kind of tickle and make me ask questions. And so that's really who I am is someone who asks questions. And at this point in my life, I'm not afraid to explore the answers.
Yeah, no, I love that. And was there a pivotal moment along that way that sort of fundamentally changed your trajectory?
Probably my time in MIT. I know they'd probably love to hear that, but I think it's a reality because that was one of the first times I just actually got to know people in multiple different industries in multiple different countries simultaneously. And healthcare in the U.S. is very siloed. So you just, you know your specialty, you know medicine, you don't know much outside of that.
But I had never really worked with like multinational CFOs and just have that global perspective. I really didn't work with a lot of VCs before. Rocket scientists, people who were talking about satellites from SpaceX, just the conversations were different. Not saying that I didn't work with a lot of really smart people, but... These people just thought differently.
So then it causes you to think a little bit differently about what the opportunities could be versus what the normal protocol always is. And it's true. I mean, if I mess up, someone may die. Well, if they mess up. And the satellite or the rocket, like the same thing can happen. So I realized that the risk is there in many different ways, but you can kind of think outside of the box.
And that really gave me the opportunity to work with startups, to really talk about innovation. And that kind of led me no longer in the straight and narrow path of just practicing medicine as a surgeon, just what else can happen.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Jennifer face as a Black female urologist?
Everyone's building it as the bus is moving. If you're allowing me to try that and make mistakes potentially and, you know, not get terminated, then I won't. And the answer was like, yes. And I can honestly say everything that they promised actually has come to fruition. Sometimes it's the bait and switch and then you're like in the basement like shoveling coal. But that's not the case.
They were actually, I mean, transparent and it's worked out very well.
Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah, so you're the vice chair of physician integration and innovation. So there's probably not a typical day, but what would be a typical month or something? Plus, you're still doing surgery.
Yeah, so my week is really broken up, and that helps me compartmentalize each of the roles. There always is overlap, but it fits. kind of makes me more efficient because I can really focus. I know we always say people can multitask, but if you really focus for like a concrete period of time, you can do so much more. And so typically I operate on Mondays.
So anyone that I see during the week, I'll have an OR schedule on Monday. My mind is committed to operating on Mondays. I see patients Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the office. And then Thursdays and Fridays are my academic days. So those are the days that I write papers, write books, give lectures, go to the regions. So one of the things that we're working on and part of my role is integration.
So it's figuring out how does this office run? What do these physicians or team members need? And then hey, what are we doing well here that needs to happen there? And making sure everyone's actively communicating because it's hard. If you have nine different hospitals and you have 15 different offices, people don't know each other, right?
They're so far geographically apart, but you need someone to kind of be that conduit of like, oh, you need help in there? Guess what? This person, Sally over here, did an excellent job. Let me connect you. Let's be on call. And you help smooth those arrangements. Because as a practicing clinician, like you are working, you are seeing patients, you are doing your inbox. All of this extra is time.
We call it pajama time. You're doing it at night. You're doing it in between. Like there's only so much time in the day and we want people not to burn out.
I'd love to shadow you for a week. That'd be kind of fun, especially in the surgery. Well, maybe not. It depends on the day. What are one or two things that you can share that either you're working on in the innovation space now? And I saw, yeah, I mentioned on top, you guys have this great innovation suite lab. It's pretty amazing.
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