Why did you join AAOS?
Medicine is a consummately collaborative venture, in education, research, patient care, and advocacy. AAOS provided me with an opportunity to get involved in all these areas as a part of a nurturing and supportive community. AAOS also permits orthopaedic surgeons to operate with "strength in numbers", which is just as critical to affairs within orthopaedic surgery as it is to the management of external forces around it.
Do you currently volunteer with an AAOS committee? If yes, which one(s)?
I am the Past Chair of the Resident Assembly, having served in the Chair position from 2019-2020.
How do you define success?
A feeling of self-fulfillment and accomplishment in career, family, and life. Success is not dichotomous with failure, but rather a self-defined state of mind.
Who is your biggest inspiration and why?
My father. He was an Ophthalmologist at Stony Brook, where I went to medical school. He was infamous for doing whatever he could to provide care to patients who were uninsured or undocumented, valuing human life over the pursuit of profit. He passed away while I was a medical student, but most of my decisions continue to be influenced by the love, compassion, and joy that he showed every day at the hospital.
What do you love most about AAOS?
The friendships. Orthopaedics is as much a profession as it is a family. It is incredible to learn about the incredible things being done in our community, and how welcoming everyone is to expanding our role and voice within the field at new/future attendings.
What advice would you give to new members of AAOS?
Get to the Annual Meeting as often as possible. See everything, talk to everyone, and learn as much as you can. The meetings may seem long and confusing in the beginning of training, but they're so important to our advancement as a community.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself that not many people know?
Before medical school I was a competitive rower. I did my novice semester while studying abroad at Oxford, rowed club varsity at Stony Brook, then spent time as both rower and coach for my college and local town club while a graduate student at Cambridge.