Dr. George Daley: Dean of Harvard Medical School (Raise the Line)

Hi, I'm Sh Ghani. Thanks for checking out the raise line interview series.

In which me and my cohost doctor Rishi Desai and registered nurse, Janna Amil, explore how to strengthen our healthcare system with some amazing leaders in medicine, technology, education and government.

And they have some great advice for people starting careers in healthcare as well. I hope you will watch these highlights and then go listen to the full podcast interview wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Sh in today on ra line. I'm privileged to be joined by Dr George Daley.

Dr Daly is the Dean of Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized leader in stem cell science and cancer biology.

For our audience, they would love to hear in your own words, what attracted you to medicine and in your field of stem cell research, you know, II came with an interest in politics in physics in, in biology.

I ended up majoring in philosophy actually when I started out and, and then because I was a work study student, uh I actually my job was washing dishes at the Mather House dining hall.

Coming back as a sophomore, I ended up answering an advertisement um for a dishwasher in a laboratory. A bit of a step up from the, from the, it was a big step up.

But within about six weeks I had ingratiated myself in the lab. So I was actually doing work study in a laboratory, which was fantastic and ultimately changed my direction to basic biology research.

And then I, you know, I explored how to do that and got interested in both medical and scientific training. So I ended up pursuing an MD phd program at Harvard.

My phd was at MIT and you know, scientific interests. It included cancer and um and and blood and the fact is that a lot of blood cancers are treated by bone marrow transplantation.

And that got me interested in stem cells. So it's a circuitous path to where I am today, but I can actually, you know, track it in a way that makes it actually sound rational.

So Dr Daly, I mean, you've had a very storied career that's still in many ways just beginning at the intersection of research, education, administration policy and other fields.

What advice would you give to our audience, which is current and future healthcare professionals about meeting the moment of this pandemic, the challenges and opportunities in the future in the ways that World War II was the defining experience for a whole generation.

My father's generation, this pandemic is the defining experience for an entire generation of uh up and coming healthcare professionals.

I have been so inspired by the activism of our students, by the energy and the commitment, they have seen the challenge they've risen to it.

Our medical students developed a COVID curriculum which has now been used around the world. They found creative ways to volunteer to support the frontline healthcare workers by providing tutoring for their Children, childcare.

But they've also gotten deeply engaged in the science. I've never seen more passion, more hard work on the part of our graduate and medical students working in laboratories to try to find cures, to try to push diagnostics, to enhance vaccines, all of those ways, whatever way you can be inspired, realize that this is going to be an experience that you will never forget.

It will shape who you are and who you will become. Thanks for watching this preview of Raised Line to hear the full interview.

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