Breaking the Bias: Celebrating leading professional women for International Women's Day

Domenic: Good morning, Lisa, and thanks for joining us for this brief video. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are now?

Lisa: Sure. Thanks, Dom. Happy to. My background is as an emergency physician. I was trained to practice emergency medicine at the Ottawa hospital for the University of Ottawa, and I also worked as a patient safety researcher, and I did that work for 15 years. Loved it. Then I was headhunted to the CMPA, the Canadian Medical Protective Association. When I reflect back on how I got to where I am, which is CEO of the CMPA, I think of three things. I think of serendipity. I think of mentorship and I think of leadership training.

Maureen: I'm going to pick up on one of your comments about mentorship and particularly interested whether there were women in your life who were great mentors to you.

Lisa: I was very fortunate to benefit from female mentorship and, in fact, I started out intentionally because the specialty of emergency medicine is a male dominated specialty. I had some great male mentors but it did occur to me, and I sat on the Gender Diversity and Equity Committee at the University of Ottawa, it occurred to me that I might benefit from some female mentorship. Particularly as I was starting to contemplate becoming a mother, and thinking about what was involved there, and realizing that as great as my male mentors were they didn't have the same experiences that I was about to have, that I'd already had, so I actually reached out through the University of Ottawa for a female mentor and I got a mentor, Kathy Gillis, who was a Chair Psychiatry at the time. Phenomenal mentor and really helped me think carefully about work life balance, how to progress my career. She taught me a lot about how to promote myself in a way that I felt comfortable with, I had to sort of stretch and flex into, and she was tremendous as a female mentor. I also have quite a network of female emergency physicians who provided a lot of peer mentorship, and more like informal mentorship, but really important mentorship. One example I think of is when I was putting in my application for promotion at the University there was no where to indicate where I put my maternity leaves. So I put a call out to my other female emerg docs in the network and said, what do you guys do here? It was fascinating because I got answers all over the map from, don't say anything, to, show how productive you were during your maternity leave. I was like, wait a second. But there was no space for it so I created space for it, again with help from my mentors, and thinking about the wording and how I'd say it. Said, look I've taken this time. I wasn't productive during my maternity leave. I was looking after my babies.

Maureen: No, no, no. Wait, wait. I'm going to interrupt you there. You were productive. You raised humans and you made sure they were still alive at the end of that maternity leave, and I know they're alive and well now, which means you continued to be productive in that role.

Lisa: Yeah. I love that reframing, Maureen. It was an interesting conversation, but I benefited again from female colleagues who'd come before me to have those conversations, and think about how do we bring this forward so the University does start thinking about this.

Domenic: I would venture that was very valuable to the University to hear that, and to hear that I had to take time and think about this, and articulate it in a way that doesn't penalize but also it helps the process.

Maureen: I'd welcome your perspective on things that you think we've progressed at in your time as a professional woman.

Lisa: I do share your view, Maureen. I think we have made progress and I think sometimes it's hard for us to remember what it was like before because we focus on what's in front of us right now. But I think about the women who came ahead of me in the emergency department. There weren't many of them but they described stories of having miscarriages on shift because they didn't want to tell anyone what was happening. That's, to me, horrifying. I'm proud to say that that wouldn't happen anymore because of the supports we put in place for female physicians and that's just one example though of some of the cultural changes that have happened, that have made it safe for women to say, I need some accommodations because I'm pregnant, or because I'm having complications with my pregnancy, and it's normalized and it's okay. That's a huge shift. I also think the Me Too movement made a huge shift in terms of the types of conversations that I've heard women and men having. I'm so inspired by the new generation of women which are like, this is not acceptable. Like, remotely. They'll challenge that and it's not okay to say, that's just the way that it is. That's a lesson for me, also, is really thinking about ensuring that I am not, by not speaking out in some of those instances, what you permit you promote.

Maureen: I'd welcome your thoughts on what biases or misconceptions about women have you challenged and how has that worked.

Lisa: I've challenged the bias around what a CEO can look like. The beauty of being in a role such as CEO is I can come in and say, I'm going to do it differently. And I have. I've been able to, for example one of the things I learned in my career the hard way was the importance of taking care of myself first. I can't do anything of the things I want to do unless I prioritize self-care and that leads me to have very clear boundaries, between my personal life and my work life, and that was different than how things were done before. But I'm able to do that and I think that I am succeeding in my role, and again, showing other women that I can be a mom of teenage daughters, and be a CEO and show up fully at work, and show up fully as a mom and a wife, and do it in a different way. I think that's exciting for other women to see the possibility of shifting models of leadership in different ways.