From Corporate Dysfunction to Transformative Leadership: An Integrative Medicine Journey

FROM CORPORATE DYSFUNCTION TO TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP

How three mentors shaped my understanding of servant leadership and systemic change

The Foundation: Learning from Heroes

When I entered healthcare leadership, I looked forward to working with great leaders and learning from them. Among many, three leaders became my heroes and shaped everything I understand about authentic leadership.

Dr. Linda Hill served as co-residency director of SDSU-UCSD General Preventive Medicine Residency when I met her. She's a natural leader who inspires through presence, integrity, and transparency. I always knew where I stood with her. After 20 years, I still look back on those two years with fondness and nostalgia—I worked the hardest, accomplished the most, and learned the most.

When she recruited me, she gave me permission to pursue alternative medicine as my area of interest, as long as I met residency requirements. This freedom allowed me to create integrative pain services for SDSU students and for St. Vincent de Paul through UCSD. I also wrote a thesis evaluating evidence for treating cocaine addiction with acupuncture, which was later published.

Through Dr. Hill's program, I met Dr. Vincent Felitti, the expert behind the widely cited ACE (Adverse Childhood Events) study. When he lectured about ACE findings, I shared that his observations, while novel in the scientific community, were widely acknowledged among healers. He invited me to join his team at Positive Choice Wellness Center within Kaiser Permanente, working as a holistic physician.

Having been trained in the HMO model, I spent an hour with each patient exploring multi-factorial aspects of disease development and solving complex medical problems with mind-body therapeutics. Dr. Felitti was a true visionary who created preventive medicine solutions for Kaiser Permanente, saving millions of dollars and countless patient lives. I admire the longevity he had with Kaiser and how much he accomplished working within the system.

Dr. Andrew Weil, the renowned integrative medicine expert, became my third hero. I'm most impressed with Andy because he's genuinely kind—someone who inspires you because you love and respect him, and you wouldn't do anything to disappoint him. I was introduced to Andy's integrative fellowship by another mentor, Dr. Bernie Siegel, pioneer in integrative oncology. Bernie was right—Andy's fellowship propelled my career.

The Reality Check: What Leadership Actually Is

A healthcare senior administrator once told me that leadership qualities come from attending MBA programs and corporate leadership programs. I have to disagree.

There are two fundamental truths I've learned about leadership:

1. Leadership Is Not About Yourself

Think about history's greatest leaders: Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Lincoln. All served others. Gandhi served the idea of India as a free nation. Lincoln served preserving the union and emancipating slaves.

As a leader, I'm proud that my team advanced as individuals and professionals. From Georgia Integrative Medicine, we "graduated" one MA and one intern as physicians. We graduated our clinic manager as a mental health professional who has since retired and works as a coach. One MA fulfilled her dream of having a private practice in nutrition and wellness. Another professional found her balance as both mom and physical therapist.

The dark side of servant leadership is personal sacrifice—especially true when running a business. Servant leadership must be balanced with company mission, operations, and profit.

2. Leadership Starts With Yourself

Think about Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, and Lincoln again. All proactively chose a path—to great personal peril—and dedicated themselves to a mission that required ultimate sacrifice (all except Buddha, who died at age 80 of food poisoning).

Consider Mandela imprisoned, or Viktor Frankl in a concentration camp. These may be extreme examples, but all of us make micro-decisions that either add to or subtract from our personal leadership.

There's a study showing that even 20 minutes of playing a power role affects individuals—they ate more cookies and left more mess. To counteract power's insidious nature ("absolute power corrupts absolutely"), the only antidote I know is mindfulness and self-leadership.

From Corporate Healthcare to Independent Vision

After dedicating myself to advancing integrative medicine since 1999, including our Georgia Integrative Medicine team publishing a book on our collective experience, I'm encouraged by integrative medicine's 2022 direction.

Acceptance and demand continue growing rapidly. Rich diversity now exists—lifestyle medicine, functional medicine, anti-aging medicine—allowing patients to seek specialized care and physicians to specialize in areas that suit them best.

I've been drawn to specific areas through direct experience or loved ones' experiences:

• Integrative Oncology

• Integrative Pain Management

• Integrative Approach to Allergies

• Integrative Approach to Autoimmune Diseases

• Integrative Approach to Complex Mystery Illnesses

For example, I'm a chronic pain survivor. Today, I'm pain-free after medication, PT, injections, and surgery couldn't help. Family members have benefited by surviving cancer, reversing allergy symptoms by treating root causes, modulating immune systems for better autoimmune control, and solving a mystery condition that turned out to be mold allergy.

My skills were forged by training with masters like Drs. Bernie Siegel, Andrew Weil, and Richard Niemtzow, and through my Georgia practice where desperate patients came after exhausting both conventional physicians and alternative healers. My clinic manager, knowledgeable in Native American healing, called me "the badger medicine man"—I never gave up fighting for patients, no matter how difficult their conditions.

Breaking Free: The Next Phase

Currently, I'm transitioning from six years of corporate integrative medicine. Frankly, I'm ready for a break from being an employee of the "healthScare system"—a term I borrowed from healthcare transformation expert Ann Richardson. While my last position represented probably the best operating conditions I could achieve, the dysfunctions I experienced appear universal.

I've decided to focus on transformative projects:

Value-Based Care for Integrative Medicine - Operating with member-funded budgets where care focuses on longer-term relationships and outcomes through membership-based organizations.

Insurance-Based Integrative Medicine - Many practices struggle accepting insurance due to fee discounting, system complexity, and compliance fears.

Project Milagro ("miracle" in Spanish) - What looks miraculous to the public—ballet pirouettes, martial artists breaking bricks, elaborate wedding cakes—results from years of knowledge acquired through correct teaching, painful practice, and mastery will.

This project seeks large impact one patient at a time. While I cannot reverse stage IV cancer, protocols I've learned help some patients live remaining life relatively pain-free and energetic. Some patients (including myself) given lifelong chronic pain diagnoses can lead relatively normal lives with minimal, manageable pain.

Leadership as Catalyst for Change

Gandhi said, "Be the change you want." I wanted to contribute to healthcare systems exploring and adopting integrative medicine. That's happening now. My project interests are shifting to creating:

1. Accessible models that accept insurance

2. Sustainable collaboration models removing fee-for-service barriers

3. Optimal outcome models

In 2022, many possibilities exist through technology and consciousness evolution, especially post-COVID trials. Telemedicine, once resisted by medical industry and patients, is now among medicine's fastest-growing sectors.

I think I can contribute as a catalyst, perhaps through consulting, helping transform healthcare from the inside out—not through corporate programs or MBA degrees, but through servant leadership that starts with self and serves something greater than individual ambition.

The question isn't whether we have ideal leaders like Trump or Biden. The question is: will we be the change we want to see, one patient, one system, one transformation at a time?