Sponsoring leads to institutional advancement
By Deborah Wormser
UT Southwestern Medical Center’s March observance of Women’s History Month included a panel discussion on “Leveraging Sponsors to Advance Careers” before a standing-room-only crowd.
The event, sponsored by UT Southwestern’s Office of Diversity & Inclusion and Equal Opportunity and the Office of Women’s Careers, drew about 300 attendees and included some of UT Southwestern’s top executives and faculty leaders: Dr. Deborah Diercks, Chair of Emergency Medicine; Susan Hernandez, Associate Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer, University Hospitals; Dr. Bruce Meyer, Executive Vice President for Health System Affairs and Executive Director of the Faculty Practice; and Dr. Sandra Schmid, Chair of Cell Biology; as well as Heidi Murray, Chief Operating Officer of Leadership Women, a Dallas-based organization providing leadership education for more than 35 years.
In her opening remarks, moderator Merridth Simpson, Manager of Diversity and Inclusion, said, “Sponsorship happens every single day in every organization. As an institution, it’s time we give it transparency and become more strategic about it. The reality is this is for everyone,” she said, taking a moment to thank the men in the audience and on the panel for their participation.
Dr. Helen Yin, Associate Dean for the Office of Women’s Careers, opened the event by explaining how sponsorship differs from mentorship in several significant ways and offered practical tips for creating and cultivating sponsor-protégé relationships. She said that although women make up half of medical students, they represent only 15 percent of all medical school department chairs, and similar gaps exist for minorities of both genders. One way to increase sponsorship of underrepresented groups is for senior leaders to intentionally identify outstanding high-potential women and minority performers for sponsorship.
Sponsorship can potentially increase diversity and inclusion in an organization. Sponsors hold more powerful positions than mentors – usually at least two levels above protégés – and they provide stretch opportunities that can catapult advancement.
“A coach tells you what to do. Mentors advise you. A sponsor will talk about you and will promote you (to others),” Dr. Yin said.
“Part of working with sponsors is getting outside of your comfort zone and it’s scary,” said Dr. Meyer, explaining how frightened he was when a sponsor invited him to write book chapters based on Dr. Meyer’s reputation for getting things done.
“Your reputation precedes you into every room,” he said.
Now responsible for overseeing UT Southwestern’s clinical enterprise, Dr. Meyer shared the sponsor’s perspective. “In leadership there comes a time when you go from ‘I can personally do it’ to ‘I need someone (else) to do it,’” he explained, adding that protégés who can be trusted to complete projects are key to building the relationship.
Ms. Hernandez described a sponsor at a previous institution who gave her progressively responsible nursing practice and leadership roles and encouraged her to take a risk on a major project.
“She said, ‘We’re going to do this and it’s a risk. What you and I need to know is if it doesn’t work, you’re not a failure.’ That really started it all for me,” she recalled.
Dr. Schmid said she had no intention of going to graduate school until a professor at the University of British Columbia hosted a visit by then-Stanford University assistant professor – now Nobel Laureate – Dr. Jim Rothman. During the course of the visit, her professor told his visitor about an undergraduate with the moxie to take a master’s level course.
“I’d missed the (application) deadlines and had not taken the GRE, but I got a second-round packet from Stanford in the mail. It completely changed my life,” Dr. Schmid said. The former Rothman lab graduate student stressed the importance of feeling worthy to take opportunities when they arise.
“You have to feel like you deserve it, that you belong there, that you can contribute,” said Dr. Schmid, an internationally known researcher who has made multiple notable advances in endocytosis – the fundamental process by which cells internalize nutrients and other molecules – in an illustrious career that began with sponsorship.
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Dr. Diercks holds the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Distinguished Chair in Clinical Care and Research.
Dr. Meyer holds the T.C. Lupton Family Professorship in Patient Care, in Honor of Dr. John Dowling McConnell and Dr. David Andrew Pistenmaa.
Dr. Schmid holds the Cecil H. Green Distinguished Chair in Cellular and Molecular Biology.
Dr. Yin holds the Margaret Yin Chair for the Advancement of Women Faculty, and the Peter and Jean D. Dehlinger Professorship in Biomedical Science.
