"'You Should Smile More', or, Why Female Physician-Leaders Are Not Your Mother"


Tuesday, October 15, 2024
6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Robert C. Pew Grand Rapids Campus
Alumni, Community, Faculty, Staff, Students


Rima Shah (CMO of Corewell Health West, MD) and Beth Makowski (Division Chief, Hospitalist Group, Corwell Health,  DO) and Prof. DeWilde are presenting a workshop titled 

“’You Should Smile More’, or, Why Female Physician-Leaders Are Not Your Mother”

in the PMBA class Tues. evening, Oct. 15 (we recently presented this at the Society for Business Ethics conference in Chicago).  You are invited to join us. It will be in Rm 2023 of the Seidman Building from 6-7pm that Tuesday evening.  Please rvsp directly to Michael DeWilde at [email protected]  

"Recent research has given women (and everyone else) reason to be optimistic about what happens when more women physicians take top business leadership positions in health care systems. Financial performance tends to be more positive, systems become more socially responsive, and litigation goes down, among other results. A number of reasons have been floated for this good news: women, perhaps, really are more collaborative, really do embrace more transformational leadership approaches, and take leadership roles because they sincerely believe in fostering positive change and less in self-promotion. They embrace the role of compassionate care-giver and carry that over to systems-level thinking. 

Much of this is confirmed in the work the three of us do at Corewell Health, Michigan’s largest integrated health system. But none of it necessarily comes easy. Female physician leaders (to say nothing of other female physicians and residents)) continue to face, regularly and to an extent not faced by male counterparts, actions and comments that are demeaning, dismissive, passive-aggressive, and outright hostile.

In this workshop we will offer up paradigmatic examples of the unethical, unthinking, and often unjust behaviors these women – and, by extension, female business leaders - face far too often. We’ll role play certain common scenarios and argue that some responses are better and more effective than others, and can and should be employed for reasons of advocacy, self-and other-respect, and the creation of institutions where espoused values are lived values. We'll also briefly examine the role psychological transference might play in these encounters.  


Location Information


L. William Seidman Center
Room 2023
50 Front Ave SW
Grand Rapids, MI 49504


Contact Information


Please rvsp directly to Michael DeWilde at [email protected]  


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This event was added to the calendar by Valerie Palmer (palmerv@gvsu.edu) on Tuesday, September 3, 2024 and was last updated on Thursday, September 12, 2024 at 8:56 a.m.