Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 1; An Interview with Tony Wynne
3.6k Plays1 year ago
In this first full length episode, NAAHP CDEI welcomes Tony Wynne to discuss how he has approached DEIJ since taking on this role. Hosts Zuri Obado-Bennett (Johns Hopkins) and Misty Huacuja-LaPointe (University of Illinois at Chicago) ask questions to get a deeper understanding of the work being done and where we still have to go. John Moses-Brownson (Penn State) produces.
Recommended
Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, NAP members for our first full length episode and fully flavored episode of the Lunch Hour podcast. We are welcoming Tony Nguyen, executive director at the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions Incorporated. Buckle up for a great episode.
NAP's Mission and Goals
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Lunch Hour, the official podcast of NAP's Committee for Diversity, Equinine, and Inclusion. NAP is the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions. Each episode, we seek to educate, connect, and grow together as a community working to help prepare and support tomorrow's healthcare leaders. That is all I've got for you this episode. I'm going to be taking a step back. My name is John Moses Bronson from Penn State.
00:01:11
Speaker
But let me quickly introduce your hosts. They're going to introduce themselves to you a little bit.
Hosts Introduction
00:01:17
Speaker
Misty and Zuri, go ahead and take it away. All right. Thanks, John. Hi, everyone. I'm Misty Wakuhalapoint. I'm the director for pre-professional advising at the University of Illinois, Chicago. And I am the co-chair for the Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for NAP. Hello, everyone. Zuri Obadobene here. Greetings and salutations to all who are listening.
00:01:39
Speaker
And I am an assistant director at Johns Hopkins University and also co-chair along with Ms. D for NAPC DEI. Fantastic. And we are so excited to introduce Tony Nguyen to the podcast
Tony Nguyen's Background
00:01:55
Speaker
today. So Tony has been the executive director of the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions since October of 2019. Prior to serving NAAHP or NAP,
00:02:07
Speaker
I know people have strong feelings about which they prefer. I used to be an NAHP person. Once I became the CDEI co-chair, NAP is just so much easier. So that's how I will refer to it from here on out. So prior to serving NAP at this level, Tony was the Director of Admission and Recruitment Affairs for the American Association of Veterinary Veterans.
00:02:29
Speaker
veterinary, I cannot say that word. It's kind of like saying the library, veterinary medical colleges. So Tony, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me. We're very excited to talk with you. You and I have known each other in this NAP capacity since
00:02:48
Speaker
2020, I forget exactly which month. But in all of that time, I don't think I have ever asked you this question. So I'm looking forward to diving in. So first off, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Most of us like me know you in a very professional capacity, seeing you at conferences and meetings, those sorts of things. But what do you like when you're off the clock?
00:03:12
Speaker
Do you have any hobbies? Do you have any interests? I imagine that you like live and sleep at the nap offices, but I can't, you know, I'm sure that's not really true. I don't know. It's a little more true than you think it might be. I know I get emails that, you know, all hours sometimes.
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, I do eat and sleep a nap. I really do. I nap a lot is a good way to, no, probably not a good way to do it. Yeah, when I'm not on the clock, I am home taking care of my dog. She is a four-year-old overweight pit bull that I'm madly in love with. Does she have a name? Her name is Candy. Candy. Yes.
00:03:59
Speaker
So certainly taking care of her. When I really do check out of work, I'm sitting at a piano, my music studio, writing music. I read a ridiculous amount about things like history and British monarchy and Rome and those are just things that I'm interested in.
00:04:22
Speaker
Um, but, but mostly it's, uh, it's music that keeps me grounded and keeps me D napped is a good way to put it. That's fantastic. I had no idea that you were that interested in music. And on a side note, we should compare reading lists. Cause I just finished an amazing paleoanthropology book and I just started another one. So, and I have a favorite podcast on history, so we should connect on those later. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:04:49
Speaker
If you're interested, TonyWinMusic.com. We're going to check that out after this. TonyWinMusic.com. TonyWinMusic.com. I will totally be stalking that later because now I'm curious. I want to know all the music. Shall we dive into more serious topics? We could certainly talk about, I was an anthropology archaeology major and I'm a history buff, so I could go down that.
00:05:18
Speaker
rabbit hole for hours. See now, I never knew that, so it's good to know. Definitely, definitely.
Focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
00:05:26
Speaker
Part of our goal with the podcast and with CDI in general,
00:05:32
Speaker
and specifically today is to provide listeners with context to understand the, I like to call it JEDI, the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, but my colleague Zuri likes to call it DEIJ, so Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, work being done by NAP. So can you tell us a little bit about the mission and vision of NAP as it relates to those topics?
00:06:02
Speaker
Yeah. The established mission of NAP really is to serve as a resource for professional development of pre-health advisors. That in a single sentence is what our mission is. The deeper definition obviously has a lot of different pathways.
00:06:26
Speaker
What I recognized, I think what we recognized as an association back in 2019 when I took on this role was that we weren't paying enough attention to
00:06:39
Speaker
the scope of diversity. We seem to be very centered on the diversity of the students that our members were serving. But as an association, not so much as what does diversity and equity and inclusion and justice look like for the association. So we really did a pivot early on. And I think that's where CDEI kind of got reformatted into what you know now.
00:07:10
Speaker
The pivotal role of CDEI is not to serve as a committee for our association. It is to serve as a sounding board for what the rest of the association does. And I think that's the pivotal difference between the old kind of committee structure and the fundamental what does equity and inclusion mean across the board. For me,
00:07:38
Speaker
It means equal representation, equal respect. It means making sure there's opportunities to anybody that wants the opportunity, whatever. You can define opportunity any way you want. Make sure there's a pathway for someone that wants to go from A to Z. It's our job to make sure that we've created that pathway.
00:08:03
Speaker
So that's sort of the vision and mission rolled together as it relates to CDEI. That's really informative. And I think what many don't know is that we are sitting on one of the solution focused elements of bringing that to life. So I guess in addition to why or how you supported this podcast to getting off the ground as a format to kind of
00:08:33
Speaker
support the association members as well as dissemination of information and things like that. What are some other processes or programs that under your leadership you have really tried to develop and implement to directly impact the work that's being done?
NAPED and NAPLEADS Programs
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate that question. The two major flagstone, the flagship programs of our association
00:09:02
Speaker
NAPED and NAPLEADS. The purpose of those two programs, the first one NAPED is a continuing education program. We are building this so that it will be a learn as you go. I'm interested in this topic. I can take a course and get rewarded either in points or a certificate or something like that for the work that you put in. It's been around for a year or two, but it's still being developed.
00:09:32
Speaker
That allows a lot of opportunity for professional and personal development in a curriculum-style learning module. NAPLEADS, of course, is wildly successful over the last two years with one graduated cohort, a second cohort in the works right now, third cohort being worked out.
00:09:57
Speaker
The purpose of NAPLEES was to create a leadership academy for our membership, to enable them to explore opportunities in leadership within our association. And this new track that we're talking about will be leadership within their own institution. This provides, I believe, these two programs together work hand in hand
00:10:24
Speaker
to provide the professional development that our mission is based on. And we'll open up some doors for individuals that may not have had those doors open before. Yeah. It's funny, when I started with CDEI, I remember you and I and Rona chatting about committees and those sorts of things. And Zuri and I have kind of made it our tagline to sort
00:10:53
Speaker
the flag in transparency and being as transparent and open and I certainly feel like with your leadership that has been something that you've
00:11:02
Speaker
also been interested in doing and I kind of remember that moment.
Transparency and Leadership Access
00:11:07
Speaker
It was sort of a hold my beer moment where we were talking about like that it's hard for people to be selected for committees that there aren't always obvious routes for folks unless people know people who know people and that that kind of creates this cadre of folks but then we don't
00:11:26
Speaker
open it up to new ideas or new thoughts or new experiences. And you were sort of like, well, hold my beer. We have NAP leads coming. And I think it launched maybe that next year. So it's great to sort of hear and see that there's now a second cohort and that there are more people becoming familiar with different leadership opportunities and ways to get involved in NAP and that we're really are trying to
00:11:53
Speaker
offer folks the opportunity to engage in different ways. I think it's very important to count the number of Hold My Beer moments that I've had in the last four years.
00:12:05
Speaker
Can we put a number on that? There have been a lot. A lot of conversations in a hallway that all of a sudden became a program or an initiative. I think that's the power of all of our leadership to listen and hear those moments to make them happen. I do recall early discussions about
00:12:30
Speaker
What is the old model of our association and what do we vision our new model to be? And one of the new models attributes that came up was transparency. There's no reason for us not to be an open association on how we work, how you become a leader within our association, how you learn, how we do what we do.
00:12:56
Speaker
Um, it should all be out there for anyone to contribute and that's what creates those hold the beer moments. That's really, um, I feel like as someone who joined in on, um, CDI at it's, uh, I guess reviving, right. Um,
00:13:19
Speaker
It's been great to have supportive leadership in having a vision and then also providing the autonomy to kind of fulfill that vision, you know, in the best way we can doing with the talent that was, you know, that, because again, this is volunteer, right? So it's essentially people's passion projects, things they want to do for themselves and the communities that they've embedded themselves in. So I guess, you know,
00:13:49
Speaker
We kind of asked you about the overall vision for NAP, but I guess I'm always interested in why people lead in the way they do a little bit. And for your own personal passion projects, like yes, NAP is a position for you and you are working and things like that. But inside of the mission, what are some of the connected values that you say you have really felt, I guess,
00:14:19
Speaker
deep about making sure that they are also instrumental in the vision of NAP and the different ways that the committees are structured in such. So I think that's a really deep question. Sometimes I'm deep.
00:14:35
Speaker
I think what I learned in the 12, 13 years at the Veterinary Association and working with pre-vet students is how often they were talked out of what they wished they could do and hearing students
00:14:58
Speaker
frustrated with that. I just saw that over and over again. They come to us to be told no. And I don't, I think it has deep inside of me has said with the number of members that we have at NAP, the answer should always be let's see what can we do instead of just saying no.
00:15:26
Speaker
And I don't want our association to be exclusive in any way, shape, or form. And that includes the fact that we have 20 associations of the health professions of different health professions that are all members of ours equally. They all pay the same amount as membership. And my question is, are they all getting equal representation? That's debatable.
00:15:52
Speaker
And so that feeds the core of you may be a very small health profession that has very few applicants. You deserve the same amount of time as one that has a lot. So I think the core that I learned and that I bring to this position is always, always leave a door open. Always leave the possibilities of how to accomplish something or how to get to where you want to go. You should never be told you can't do something.
00:16:24
Speaker
That's really the autonomy and highlighting, like, you know, the empowerment aspect of your leadership. I guess if we were to take a turn in terms of NAS CDI, JEDI,
00:16:45
Speaker
or is that better than these days? Yeah, it does, it does. I think my fingers just like DEI and then it goes J, but you know, Jedi is definitely catchier. What challenge have you faced in terms of bringing forth changes or trying to support different committees and different movements in trying to bring change to the organization
00:17:14
Speaker
And how do you or how have you worked to address it?
Challenges with Change and Tradition
00:17:21
Speaker
So challenges abound. First of all, change is hard. Yeah. Folks don't like change, especially when you're a 50 year association who has really embedded itself in doing things a certain way.
00:17:36
Speaker
And then they take the outrageous step to bring in somebody like me who says, let's shake the tree. Let's do everything differently. Let's look at things from different angles and up and down and aside. And that kind of makes people nervous. And I recognize that. But I think I think what's important to your question is we need as an association to recognize that we are not
00:18:03
Speaker
the same model that we used to be. We are very much turning the corner now in the last few years from being sort of a social club to being a organization that has a purpose and a mission, not that we didn't before, but it's a different flavor of it. And this is not to discount engagement and coordination and collaboration.
00:18:31
Speaker
The social aspects are very important to this association. But in order to get some of these things done, we need to accept the fact that change is coming and is here. And I hope to work with the committees to recognize that and say, well, what's best for the entire association? How do we then do this for everyone? I don't know if I danced around that question or if I actually answered it.
00:19:01
Speaker
I might jump in a little bit more, because what you said, they really hit me. I've been a part of NAP for more than 10 years. And one of the things that I remember very intensely when I first started as a pre-health advisor was attending my first national conference and having been
00:19:29
Speaker
to other national organizational conferences and feel that they felt very clicky and very, you know, sort of...
00:19:36
Speaker
hard to navigate and become a part of. And I remember feeling so very welcomed and so very people were interested and open to sharing and supportive of helping people build their experience as a NAP member. And I don't think that has changed. And I think of all of the things that we can do, if we can keep that core of sharing resources and
00:20:07
Speaker
welcoming new people. And especially I know we've had a lot of turnover in the last two years with the pandemic and people retiring and leaving positions and new people coming
Importance of Diverse Voices
00:20:15
Speaker
on. So I think that piece is very important, but still focusing on that change. And I think I have certainly felt some internally, but I think also supported by you, Tony, this sense of we can be purposeful and we can be working
00:20:35
Speaker
as he said, not just to be a social organization and like a learning organization, but to make a broader difference or a bigger difference. And it kind of feels like there's certainly a group of folks who are interested in looking for that opportunity.
00:20:52
Speaker
I don't know where I was going with that. There's not really a question as much as how that resonated with me. Well, you know, Misty, I think something that is behind what you're saying is that when we think about diversity, equity, and inclusion, we also have to recognize that within our 1,800 members, we have very diverse backgrounds. We have very diverse opinions. We have very diverse everything. And we would be remiss if we didn't
00:21:20
Speaker
accept the fact that we're so different amongst all one association, all one community who all see things in a very different way to give all of them a voice, to give everyone a voice. And so that's kind of what I heard you say. Yes, there is the core that really likes that. You know, let's do an opening to a webinar and go around the room and say what our favorite cake is.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's those of those that like that. Great. Yes. Um, but not for everybody here. And as an association, it's very important that we recognize that, um, every opinion has its value, whether we agree with it or not really kind of doesn't matter unless it's harming the association. Neutrality is the way to go. I would like to, I like that neutrality is the way to go. I know that there's been some.
00:22:15
Speaker
uh, conversations around, you know, when you construct a mission statement and when you, um, formulate vision for a larger organization who have people with different backgrounds, concerns, uh, beliefs, uh, that, uh, it is best not to over nuance mission and vision. Um, where can you talk a little bit about the challenge between, um,
00:22:45
Speaker
I guess being at the top and seeing all of the moving pieces, right? I think something about, I'll insert, like, I think the beauty of being on that CDI is we have a very specific mission in how we support the membership and of course the leadership. But even though we're in alignment with the larger association, there is a responsibility that as
00:23:15
Speaker
director of the association that you have to also take into consideration what that looks like for every other moving piece. Where has that friction been for you or the challenge been for you in terms of managing that balance of, yes, being sensitive and empathetic and centering around the diverse populations, but at the same time, realizing that the organization does have a larger mission vision.
00:23:43
Speaker
Yeah, I learned, I really learned the hard way that in my position, my personal opinion is not the most important thing. And I'm, if you know me well enough, I'm a very opinionated person, I have an opinion on everything. As an association leader, the
00:24:08
Speaker
the opinion of the association comes first, not the opinion of mine personally. This is not to say that we shouldn't have specific guardrails that say, hey, operate within a sense of decency and all those kinds of codes of conduct that I think are very important. But you'll notice that even with those in our code of conduct, it doesn't say you have to be A or B. It just says, be nice if you're A or B.
00:24:38
Speaker
And I think that's what's important for the association. So the challenge for me is to bite my tongue a lot. I'm very candid. I tend to say what's on my mind. And I've learned early on in this position that that can get me in trouble. I don't want that. Is that a technique or a strategy? I don't know what that is, but I learned, oh, don't do that. Don't touch the hot stove. It's hot.
00:25:05
Speaker
There are advantages to being a volunteer. There are, but I think my methodology still is true to who I am, and that is be candid, be truthful, be honest. What you feel is best is probably the right way to go. If you start second-guessing yourself too much, you're going to change direction and go somewhere you didn't want to go.
00:25:32
Speaker
And if you find that your gut is not warmly embraced by everyone, then accept that. Say, well, okay, how can I work with you to tweak it? So I think there are a lot of challenges at the basic personality level that I had to learn very quickly. Yes. Thank you for that openness, because I'm sure to a level, obviously, the podcast platform
00:26:00
Speaker
is the hope is to use it as a way to go a little bit deeper than surface level in terms of the happenings of the collaborations that we intentionally make with organizations even outward. So we hope that future speakers will bring different perspectives and things like that. So I think for us, it was important to start within and understand
00:26:28
Speaker
you know, the mission and vision. Because, you know, one thing I'll say is, as when I came in, I felt like I was a young, I was a young professional. Now that I actually have been here for just about seven years, I realize I'm not actually that young in the professional scheme of work anymore. But I still like refer to myself as young professional.
00:26:51
Speaker
It's over. You're old at that point. I had a little bit of time. I got a little bit of time. So I remember coming in in 2017, and my direct supervisor here at Hopkins is very involved, continually involved with MEAP and NAP. And so one of the entry points for me as a new professional in the health professions, but also a young professional in the gist of work
00:27:21
Speaker
Um, it was very helpful to have, uh, guidance and, and reassurance about how to navigate the association and its benefits. Um, and I'm wondering if, if we could, you know, kind of delve into some of the, like we have the mission and vision, we have CEI, um, commission to encourage people to participate, um, not just in
00:27:48
Speaker
topics of D.I.J., but also in participating and being part of the work. So we talked about NAPLEADS and NAPED being core programs, but could you maybe talk about some of the things that under your leadership, you've really worked to encourage to try to address the equity and accessibility for membership and how that's hopefully grown
00:28:15
Speaker
um, not just who's leading in these spaces, but also like, um, who's a part of the community as a whole. So are you, are you talking about our member, our diversity of our membership itself, or are you talking about sort of how we're approaching a DEI lens on initiatives and how we run, run our business? Well, I didn't even probably both. I would say starting with probably how you
00:28:44
Speaker
bringing them in and then how you're serving them. So I guess
Role of Independent Advisors
00:28:47
Speaker
if you. Yeah. So a good example is understanding where there are perceived gaps. We hear from students all the time who are reaching out to the national office asking to speak to an advisor. And of course, we have the Find an Advisor program, which is through the member engagement committee. But what's interesting to me is
00:29:11
Speaker
the amount of students that were coming into us. And I thought, well, why is that? What are they missing? What are they not getting? And who and where should they get the help that they need? One of the things that we found is that the whole community of non-college or institution pre-health advisors that are out there. And who are they? What role are they serving?
00:29:41
Speaker
are they being fair to students they serve? And if the answer is yes, we need to fold them in so that they have the resources that pre-health advisors need. So in understanding the gap and understanding the need, the independent advisors were welcomed in as a membership. You can like that, you can not like that. That's your opinion. But as an association, that's a good example of our recognizing
00:30:12
Speaker
a community that's been kind of banging on our door and are serving students the same as the rest of us are, but not getting the recognition or the voice that they deserve. So check that box. We're still dealing, we're still reeling from what does that mean exactly to bring in a new group. The other thing we've done as an association is find non
00:30:42
Speaker
pre-health advising associations that we should be aligned with. NAMI, Nakata, HOSA, all of these, some of these are advising, some of these are not, but they all have their fingers in the future of health professions advising. And in some cases, they are the content experts, PhDreamers.
00:31:05
Speaker
another good example of a partnership that we need to have external from our own membership that can benefit our membership and our association while benefiting them as well. So I think the short answer is to look outside of ourselves to be able to enrich ourselves through partners and things. So that covers sort of our membership. Once we've got our membership, we need to hear what the needs of our membership are.
00:31:35
Speaker
And the way we do that is through surveys and polls and occasionally webinars that kind of open to questions. What's critically important is engagement. If we put out a national survey and we get a 15% return from our membership, it's not viable for us to make decisions on.
00:31:57
Speaker
So there's sort of a conundrum here with we know that you want stuff, tell us what you want, but you don't tell us what you want, so how do we give it to you? Right? Yeah. And that's a problem. And so we want to work in the future to shorten our surveys, make them more targeted, do more of them so that they're easy to take and can be done quickly and we can gather that data. I want NAP to become an evidence-based association.
00:32:30
Speaker
Hold on. Yeah, Tony, it looks like your sound may have cut out. That's all right. Try muting yourself and coming back.
00:32:50
Speaker
So unfortunately, there was an error with our recording software that we were using, but never fear. We are all back and ready to continue on talking about all the wonderful things happening in the DEI sphere with NAP. So I'm going to turn things back over to my lovely hosts.
00:33:16
Speaker
Darn technical difficulties. But it did give me time to think about more things, which is maybe not a good thing. But, you know, in thinking about everything that you were talking about, Tony, that you've been able to do with NAP and I think
00:33:32
Speaker
from my perspective with Zuri as CDEI, like we've had the opportunity to really just try a lot of different things. And I think we've made a lot of progress over the last four years that are almost four years that I've been in the role. But given that you've been in your role for
00:33:52
Speaker
2019, how many years is that? Four and a half, five, something like that. I can't count anymore. Pandemic did away with my ability to- Just starting five. There you go. Just starting five. What do you feel like you are most proud of in terms of the accomplishments or the things that you've done, what NAP has done over that time?
Adaptation During the Pandemic
00:34:16
Speaker
Thank you for that question. There's a lot, and there's a lot to unpack because in the last four years,
00:34:23
Speaker
We had a global pandemic. We had all sorts of craziness that occurred because of that. And as an association, we've had to pivot from an in-person conference to a virtual on a dime. One of the most amazing things I think I've ever seen is an entire community of people
00:34:47
Speaker
Change the way their entire world is run all within a matter of what seems like days um advisors were all of a sudden virtually advising um Education was becoming virtual. Everybody all students were learning on computers. Uh, just the whole world just Went upside down. So what am I most proud of well? This association um
00:35:13
Speaker
This community of individuals that makes up this association are what I'm most proud of because every day I learned something new about how to pivot, how to learn, how to be nimble. And I saw that firsthand as we navigated through the pandemic with folks learning how to do things in a completely new way that it was foreign to them, but they accomplished it and got the job done.
00:35:41
Speaker
And I saw that in our membership. I saw that in our staff. So that's the thing I'm most proud of is our membership and how they manage that. As an association, I'm most proud of the fact that we are not afraid to get into some areas where we're a little uncomfortable. Like I said earlier, change is hard.
00:36:03
Speaker
And I appreciate your preamble, Misty. I'm not responsible for making changes to this association. I'm the guard. I might suggest and then hope that we can accomplish something. And it's not my role to make the changes to help usher in change. The poet John Dunn has a wonderful poem, No Man is an Island.
00:36:32
Speaker
And I think that that's like very true of the nature of the work that we do. None of us do it by ourselves, even if we're shops of one in our particular institutions. Yeah. But give us a humble brag. You know, I believe in humble brags. They keep the, you look back and be like, yeah, I did that. That was great. You know, I think this is, I think this is a good place. It's a safe place, Tony, you know, to just be like, you know, this is one thing I know, um, in your full,
00:37:02
Speaker
know professional career that you've had some learning curves and you've had some challenges and some you've shown resilience I'm sure in many ways so like what's that humble brag that you're like wow I really worked hard at that and it really turns out to to be successful. I think working with our leadership to accomplish our our NAPED and NAPLEES programs are
00:37:25
Speaker
the feathers in the cap. I really felt that a learning, a continual learning, not relying on waiting to teach and educate our members for every two years and wait till a conference comes around, but do it all the time. We're all lifelong learners. We should be doing it all the time. So having the support to get NAPED and NAPLEADS up and running are the feathers in the cap. I love it. Yeah.
00:37:55
Speaker
And that made me feel very uncomfortable saying that. I'm not a humble bragger at all. I work as a group.
00:38:09
Speaker
So in the work that you've done, Tony, do you feel like there are techniques or strategies or resources that you've found helpful that you would want to share with our listeners to sort of say, hey, this helped me, you know, sort of like, I like to point to Zuri and go, she taught me about empathy mapping and she's great at teaching me all these strategies to use. Are there, you know, things that you would point to for that?
00:38:41
Speaker
Yes, there are too many to name because, you know, I think to be successful in any job, you need to be open-minded and open-eared all the time. And I think it needs to be very clear that I'm not the content expert here. The staff at the national office are not the content experts. Our expertise is listening to the assets that are within our membership.
00:39:10
Speaker
and learning what we can, you know, bring up to the national level and what we need to just leave where they are. So the resources all come from our membership. And the needs that make our decisions as leaders are not just kind of 2 a.m. Hey, I think NAP should do this now. It comes from a need and a desire and a voice. So strategies always keep an open mind, always keep my ear to the ground.
00:39:40
Speaker
Um, read health prof religiously and see what people are chatting about. And if it's, if it's bubbling festering, that's an indication that something should be done. So that was a, uh, an easy dance around on that one. I won't push this time. So I guess, you know, as we wrap up this episode, we've talked about
00:40:05
Speaker
higher level mission vision. We talked about methodologies and strategies. I'm just mostly going through the problem solving process, right? Evaluative, again, data driven action for the association. What would you want your listeners to do after listening to this episode in terms of everything, anything that we've talked about today, that call to action, what is it,
00:40:33
Speaker
that you're really calling for membership to think about to do and such. And we all know that filling out surveys is going to be one of those, but beyond that. Scratch that one off the list. Thanks.
Call to Action for Members
00:40:49
Speaker
I think the call to action is to recognize that this is your association and you make of it what you want out of it.
00:40:58
Speaker
engagement and being involved and volunteering if you have the time. Lending your voice if you don't have the time to volunteer but still be heard. As a collective, the call to action generally is own your association and make it what you want of it. We are in leadership, we're here to do our best to meet the needs of our membership.
00:41:25
Speaker
But we don't, you know, you can't, you can't, we can't deliver on things that we don't know that you want or need. So volunteer surveys, polls, write for the advisor if you have an opinion. Write for NAPNET on a monthly basis. Tell us what's going on. Be engaged and that's what will drive the next 50 years of NAP.
00:41:55
Speaker
I mean, I like the owning your association piece. I feel like that could be the tagline. We're still trying to work on our tagline when we leave the episode. Own your association. This is your own association. Maybe one more plug for getting involved.
00:42:14
Speaker
One of the things that I've appreciated as well is that there's now a call for volunteers, at least once or twice a year, where folks can like volunteer themselves, sign themselves up, advocate to say, hey, I'm interested in these committees. And that that's a great way to kind of, if you really want to have a say, I mean, you can have a say in a whole bunch of different ways, but well, my job, sign up for my committee. Yeah.
00:42:44
Speaker
It's one thing to feel like perhaps you aren't getting out of the association, what you were hoping to, but you know, be the change that you wish to see in the world, be the change that you wish to see a nap. There are opportunities to serve, right? I was a relatively new advisor when I got that survey and I filled it out and here I am two and a half years later, you know,
00:43:11
Speaker
It's, you don't have to be a PhD in biology or a rocket scientist or have 15 years of experience to have something really valuable to contribute. You can be a new professional who's looking to learn and looking to contribute in some meaningful way and still get a lot out of, of serving in this way. Yeah. A hundred percent. My name is Zori and I approve that message. Thank you for coming to my textbook.
00:43:42
Speaker
Oh, you guys have stolen my lines. On that note, we want to thank everybody across the membership for tuning into another episode of The Lunch Hour and keep striving for a more inclusive and just health professions community. Until next time.