MD FACEP US ARMY
New York Moves: What is your name, and what do you do?
Laura Tilley: My name is Laura Tilley, and I’m an emergency medicine physician in the United States Army.
NYM: We live in a world today where we’re still talking about diversity and inclusion. If you had the choice to send one message to corporate America to say, “It’s time to change the conversation,” what would that message be?
LT: It’s not just that times have changed the conversation; I think we’re overdue to change the conversation. The past several years have been challenging for this entire world. We’ve lived through this global pandemic, and I think that, during the pandemic, we have seen our baseline disparities, racial gaps, socioeconomic gaps, gender gaps, and other inequality gaps significantly expand. In a time when we really need to be coming together and supporting each other, I think that we’ve seen more discourse amongst us. It’s absolutely critical that we bring diversity and inclusion to the forefront of our discussions and make a better reality for our corporations and organizations.
NYM: In your opinion, what qualities make a “Moves Mentor”?
LT: Agood mentor is somebody who is caring, somebody who is passionate, and somebody who is willing to speak their mind. When I reflect on who has been my best mentor, it’s somebody that I can relate to in some way and that I can see parts of myself in. Once you become a good mentor, you’re someone that is real to their mentees. A lot of times, we photoshop or Instagram filter everything we do, and I think it’s important to show your mentee what life looks like, and not feeling like you have to sugarcoat everything or make everything look perfect. I also think that a mentor should be somebody who is willing to serve as a sponsor as well, and really bring their mentee to the table and open up doors that might not be open to them. Finally, a mentor is somebody who pushes their mentee beyond their comfort zone. They encourage and support them, while providing a safety net for their mentee to take those steps that they either didn’t think they could take, or maybe they’re just afraid to take.
NYM: How does mentoring benefit the mentor? Career-wise? Intellectually? Spiritually? Socially? Any other “-allys”?
LT: For me, mentorship is absolutely critical to my own professional and personal identities. Serving as a mentor is something that I naturally do, and really does fill my cup of who I am as a human. It also rejuvenates me as an individual, a leader, a professional, a woman, and a mother. I get rejuvenation for all of these things from my mentees. I think it’s a great opportunity to help the next generation that’s going to come from behind us, and hopefully make it a little easier for them. I want to let them get to places where I’ve been and, honestly, get above where I’ve been. To be able to see my mentees grow up, develop, and blossom into their own individuals is an incredibly rewarding experience
Mentorship is a relationship that both the mentor and mentee have to have buy into. I’m extremely passionate about mentorship, because I would not be where I am today without strong mentors in my life. Now that I’m in this position of senior leadership I can help somebody else get to where I am or exceed where I am, I 100% will back them and get behind them.
NYM: Should mentorship be a company requirement or a personal give-back?
LT: I think it is 100% corporate responsibility to establish mentorship in their corporations. Alot of times, we struggle with recruiting people into an organization, but once they’re there, I think it’s the responsibility of that leadership to develop those more junior personnel. It is critical, not just from a corporate standpoint, but just for the personal and professional job satisfaction of that individual.
While it should be mandated, I do think mentorship is a two-way street. Those mentors in the corporation have to want to do it themselves. If someone is just mandated, it doesn’t work, and so there has to be a natural tendency to want to serve in that role. As the leader of the organization, you set the priorities, and I think mentorship should be one of those priorities.
NYM: Given the evidence that successful mentoring increases the bottom line, should any responsible five year corporate strategy include a detailed plan and budget for mentoring complete with an official position for a mentoring director and regular progress reports to the board?
LT: I think it’s a balance. If you make it too prescriptive, there’s a pushback, and now it becomes like mandatory training in the army or a mandatory business meeting. You’re sitting through it, and people kind of don’t have that buy-in. But the flipside of that is if you don’t make it a priority and don’t hold people accountable for it, it’s not going to happen. It’s a balance of those two positions. Yes, I think it should be mandatory for businesses and corporations to require mentorship, and I think you need a way to hold that organization accountable to make sure it’s happening; but, you want to make sure you’re not doing it in such a restrictive, mandatory way that people are turned off immediately. You don’t want them to do it just to check the box. I think if you can get buy-in from the company, not just at the senior levels, but throughout, you can really create a culture of mentorship that can transcend that organization.
NYM: “In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism… in the 21st century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for fairness and gender equality around the world.” * Why is gender equality even a challenge, especially in the ‘enlightened’ western world?
LT: It’s a great question, and I think it’s unfortunate we still have to ask this question. It’s been a very challenging year, and with the pandemic, women are leaving the workforces in droves. The gap between publication differences for men and women professors has gotten larger. Speaking from personal experiences, our daycare closed for four and a half months. At that point, you don’t have childcare, and when you don’t have childcare and you have two working professionals in the house, you have to balance that. I think it comes down to the fact that the pandemic has stalled a lot of the progress we’ve made in terms of gender equality. My perception of why that’s happened is, with the loss of childcare and schools being closed, a lot of that workload fell on the women. We’ve seen women leave the workforce and we’ve seen the number of publications that women have had have gone down, and I think that’s a reflection of the added stresses in the house when you lose childcare during the pandemic.On a systemic level, people don’t want to give up power when someone’s had that power for so long. I think it’s a fear of change and fear of the unknown. There are some key people still in senior positions that are holding onto that.
All of that being said, I do think that there is a positive force on the horizon. We have people coming up, both men and women, in leadership that are very forward-thinking and wanting to get everybody on an equal playing field. I really am inspired by that. I’ve seen that in my own organization — male and female leadership coming up and saying, “You know, we need to address some of these issues that we’ve seen.” So, while it’s frustrating that some people are still holding onto that power and fear, I really am optimistic that the shift is coming with the people that are rising through our channels now. In younger generations, people are getting more confident with their voices, and they’re saying, “This isn’t right” and “I’m going to stand up for what’s right.” They are really feeling empowered to be advocates for each other.
NYM: Was there a defining moment or experience in your life that led you to where you are today? What was it?
LT: For me, as a physician, there are different practice-defining moments that affect who I am. For me, one of my practice-defining moments as a physician was becoming a mother. Going to med school and through residency, everything was by the book. I studied, I did well, and I was a “good doctor.” I gave my patients the most evidence-based treatments, and I checked all of those boxes. Once I became a mother, though, my perception changed so much on my patient interactions in the emergency department. I had a more holistic view of my patients and what’s happening outside of here.
For example, at 3 a.m., a parent brings in their kid to the ER at 3 a.m. for a fever. My old self would be like, “Why are you here for a fever? Your kid is fine.” Now, I realize that either they’re worried about their kid and they need your reassurance, or that they just need a work note so that they can go back to work and get this kid to school or daycare so that they can continue on with their lives.
As you go through life, your own lens changes. For me, becoming a mother has certainly changed my lens — in both my daily life and practicing life — as a physician. It’s pretty cool to see your lens change. I tell my students, “You have to accept that change as you’re going through it, and realize that your new self might be different from your old self, and that’s okay. That’s why you grow.”
NYM: How does diversity play into mentorship?
LT: Diversity is critical for mentorship in a couple of different ways. First of all, I think it’s important that the mentor and mentee need to be able to see themselves and relate to each other. It’s important that you’re able to look up to somebody and see people that look like you, that come from similar backgrounds as you, and that are where they are.t If you don’t see that or have that, you might not be encouraged to pursue that pathway because it seems unattainable. Diversity is also critical in the mentor-mentorship relationship because of the diversity of ideas and experiences. You don’t want to get into an echo chamber of hearing everything that sounds like yourself. Instead, talking with people and having close relationships with people that come from different backgrounds and experiences and may have a different lens than you, can help you work out those details. You can talk about difficult, challenging things in a respectful manner.
NYM: What do you think is the number one action we as a society can take for women’s power and equality? (e.g. affirmative action?)
LT: Having people at the table that can be an advocate for women. And I say people intentionally, because I don’t think it has to be women. I think women should need to be at the table, but I think we also need men at the table that want to empower women and want to be their advocate. I think the biggest thing we can do as a society is making sure the people at the table having the tough discussions are going to be advocates for women equality, be able to make those changes, and get society to that next level where there truly is equality between men and women.
NYM: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
LT: Growing up, my grandfather told me, “There’s always room at the top, but there’s never enough room to sit down.” That has stuck with me, and that’s been my driving force since I was a little kid. That’s the best form of advice that someone has ever given me.
Most recently, the best piece of advice I’ve gotten has been about focusing on what my priorities and values are in my life, and looking at how I’m spending my time and making sure that they align. Aas I’ve moved through my professional career, as I’ve become more senior in the medical, education, and military worlds, I’ve been taking time to reflect on these ideas. You just have to take that quiet time away from the chaos that is our lives and do some soul searching. You can allow yourself that freedom and grace to explore those values and priorities.
NYM: If it is true that whenever women are involved in any one aspect of life – domestic, business, recreation – the empirical evidence shows that activity is enhanced in a real and tangible way, why is there such fierce resistance to this female influence?
LT: One of my take-homes in my life is to just show up. Sometimes, you just have to be present, sit at the table, go to the meetings, and meet the people. For me, I feel I have been able to have a very successful professional career because I’ve done just that. There are biases for people of all different shapes, colors, and genders out there. I’m aware of them, but a lot of it is just about plowing through it. What I’ve tried to be is an excellent physician and an excellent military officer. I’ve shown up to the meetings, I’ve sat at the table, and I’ve been present. Through my actions and demonstrating my competencies, I’ve been able to win over and gain trust from people in leadership positions.
For example, I spent 6 months in Afghanistan on the Pakistan border. I had trained with my unit before I left for the year, but, two weeks before I left, I was told I was going to a new location. I met my team and my unit in Afghanistan. There were 100 men, and I was one of six women. They had just integrated women into this position recently, and they had no idea who I was because I wasn’t training with them. When I went into that situation, I was like, “Okay, they need to know me, and they need to trust me.” It wasn’t a man-woman thing. I went to every single meeting we had, I went to the operational briefs, and I showed up. I met the unit, I introduced myself to people, and I think through my presence, my leadership, and my competence, I was able to succeed. At the time, I would not have said that being a woman played into it at all, but looking back ten years later, maybe it did. It took time to build those relationships and that trust, but once the relationship and trust was there, it was a mutually beneficial relationship and it flourished.
NYM: If you could go back in time, what would you say to your 15-year-old self?
LT: I would probably tell myself to calm down a little bit and to realize it’s going to be okay. When I was 15, I felt that life had to be linear and that I had to plan everything out for the next 15 years. I had a path, and I had to stick to that path. I would tell my 15-year-old self, instead of drawing linear points that had to be made without any exceptions, to take out a crayon, scribble, make some circles, close your eyes and draw, and realize that that is what makes life amazing: all of the anticipated turns and curves and unexpected things that happen to us.
NYM: Who do you most admire? Why?
LT: One is my grandfather, who had a PhD in biochemistry. From a very early age, he always encouraged and told me about the power of education. He was the one that was my rock for my internal drive to become who I am today.
The other person that I admire the most, is a mentor that I’ve known for 15 years: Dr. Missy Gibbons. She’s also a physician, retired from the army. I continue to look at her every day and think, “You are an amazing individual.” I aspire to be her.
Enlisted to Medical Degree Preparatory Program, Bethesda, MD
INDIVIDUAL & CAMPAIGN DECORATIONS
Defense Meritorious Service Medal
Meritorious Service Medal (1 Oak Leaf Cluster [OLC])
Army Commendation Medal (4 OLC)
Joint Achievement Medal
Army Achievement Medal (4 OLC)
National Defense Service Medal
Afghanistan Campaign Medal
Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
Army Service Ribbon
NATO Medal
Combat Medical Badge
OTHER AWARDS
William P Clements Award for Excellence in Education
Army Medical Department Iron Major Award
American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) Teamwork Award
U.S. Army Surgeon General’s Physician Recognition Award
Government Services Chapter of ACEP Fellowship in Leadership and Advocacy Award
Madigan Army Medical Center Academic and Clinician of the Year Award
Valedictorian of the George Washington University School of Medicine Class of 2010
Alpha Omega Alpha
Gold Humanism Honor Society
Phi Beta Kappa
Distinguished Military Graduate
