Your physicians were trained
to be exceptional at medicine.
Leadership was left to chance.
That gap costs you people. I work with academic medical centers to close it — through cohort programs, facilitation, retreats, and speaking that develop physicians as leaders and change how departments operate.
You've promoted excellent clinicians.
Nobody built the leadership part.
Medicine has a rigorous system for developing clinical excellence. It has no equivalent system for developing leadership. Physicians are promoted for performance — then left to figure out the rest on their own.
The result isn't a people problem. It's a structural one. And it shows up in your department: in the culture, in the retention numbers, in the capable physicians who are leading from reaction instead of clarity.
Most leadership development in healthcare sits in one of two lanes — individual wellness, or generic competency training. Neither is built for the clinical environment. Neither changes how a department actually operates.
- Physicians in leadership roles who were never developed for those roles
- A culture where capable people are leaving — or quietly disengaging
- Colleagues navigating transitions — return from leave, litigation, role shifts — without structured support
- Leadership development programs that don't stick because they don't understand medicine
- A pipeline problem that looks like a retention problem
Not a wellness program.
Not a generic training.
Most offerings in this space either treat physicians like patients — building resilience so they can cope — or treat them like students — loading them with frameworks that don't survive contact with a real shift. Root & Rise works differently.
A conversation first.
Then the right container.
Every institutional engagement starts with a conversation about what your department actually needs. What follows is scoped to that — not a packaged program dropped into your context. The offerings below are the containers. The content is built around you.
Grand rounds, department leadership days, conferences, and invited talks. The room that experiences this work is the room that wants more of it. Speaking is the lowest-friction entry point and the natural on-ramp to deeper institutional engagement.
Half-day or full-day facilitation for department leadership teams, faculty groups, or cross-functional physician cohorts. Structured around a specific challenge, transition moment, or development goal — not a generic offsite agenda.
Six-month live cohort programs for physician leaders at academic medical centers. Two tracks — each addressing a distinct institutional need. Both include the Root & Rise Field Guide: shared language and tools that travel beyond the cohort room.
Leadership development for attending physicians navigating the full complexity of leading in academic medicine — values clarity, self-awareness, ethical presence, and leading through system-level friction.
Leads to async CME course — extends reach beyond the live cohort
Builds an internal peer coaching team equipped to support colleagues through vulnerable transition moments — return from leave, litigation, burnout, role shifts. Infrastructure that compounds inside the institution.
Includes the Root & Rise Field Guide — shared language your department keeps
Work that's already
in the room.
Two examples of what institutional engagement looks like in practice.
A six-month leadership practicum for physician leaders at Penn Medicine — built around supporting colleagues through vulnerable transition moments. Two cohorts currently active. Curriculum developed in partnership with Penn Medicine and offered through Penn CME. The Field Guide gives participants shared language and tools that travel beyond the cohort room and into the department.
Keynote address at a physician leadership conference — bringing the Root & Rise frameworks on ethical presence, role discipline, and leading through system-level complexity to an audience of attending physicians and department leaders. Speaking engagements are the natural entry point for institutional relationships — the room that experiences this work becomes the room that wants more of it.
An outside perspective
that sees what's inside.
I'm not a physician. That's not a gap — it's part of what makes this work. I've spent years embedded in the physician world, beginning with my husband's medical school, residency, and fellowship training — and the toll that journey took on both of us.
I understand the culture, the hierarchy, the moral weight, and the identity complexity of medicine from the inside — without being shaped by the training that produces it. That outside perspective is what lets me see what physicians often can't see about themselves, and reflect it back in a way that's useful rather than threatening.
I work with institutions the same way I work with individual physicians: a conversation first, then the right container. No packaged programs dropped into your context. No generic solutions.
Read the full story →to what your department needs.
Every institutional conversation starts the same way: with a 45-minute call to understand your context, your physicians, and what you're trying to build. No pitch. No packaged proposal. Just a real conversation about whether this is the right fit.
One conversation.
No commitment.
Whether you have a specific program in mind or you're not sure where to start — a conversation is always the right first move.
Schedule a Conversation