Ep. 83: Courage, Resilience, Vision

[00:01:00] Dr. Gary Bisbee: Good afternoon, Sandy, and welcome.

[00:01:03] Sandra Fenwick: Thank you, Gary. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[00:01:05] Dr. Gary Bisbee: Given your distinguished career, I’m wondering if you could help us think about what are the top lessons, leadership lessons you learned during your leadership career?

[00:01:17] Sandra Fenwick: Gary, you know, as I’ve been of reflecting I think the best part of the last 18 months is the top opportunity to, really think back of, what were the most important things that kind of contributed to a wonderful journey. And I thought of three courage and resilience, the what do you bring to the table? What are you going to do? And that’s a vision. And then the third one is, how are you going to do it? And for me, that has been about moral leadership. So if you’ll indulge me, I will. I’ll tell you a little bit about each one of.

[00:01:50] Dr. Gary Bisbee: Excellent.

[00:01:51] Sandra Fenwick: So for me, courage and resilience is, what I feel like I have brought to, almost every role and job that I’ve taken. It’s a curiosity. It’s a constant desire to learn. I was always encouraged to try new things, to take on unconventional roles and responsibilities. Looking for things. Maybe other people didn’t really wanna do. But were exciting to think about, where an institution or where a department or where a team could go and that was being thrown into the deep end of the pool a couple of times. Dealing with external threats. But it was really, when I think about it, I think the courage to take risks to think about what I would do and how I would do it how I would tackle the challenges and then, recover if it didn’t go perfectly. To try it again to not be afraid of, really taking on and leading with confidence. And I think covid. Really a perfect almost ending challenge where, it was about reacting and responding and and dealing with not enough information and data, having to lead with as much confidence as you could.

[00:02:57] Dr. Gary Bisbee: You left as a CEO after a very successful career at Boston Children. Hospital, how did you approach retire?

[00:03:05] Sandra Fenwick: I’m sort of a planner by nature. I, I don’t like to think about making rash decisions and jumping in and not knowing what was gonna happen, how it was gonna happen, and where I was gonna go. I look at it from a professional. And a personal perspective from the professional perspective. You know, I decided to. To my board well in advance. I had been the ceo been the president for a number of years and the ceo and about three years before I said, maybe 2020 is the right year, although, turned out to be not the right year. But 2020 is the right year. And let’s think about how we’re going to collectively go through this really careful transition. We have a lot of people. We have responsibility too. And it was of the board and a transition at the board that needed to happen, my own transition, building the team for the future. And so it worked out quite wonderfully where I hired my replacement when I became the CEO as the COO and EVP Health Affairs with the hope that there might be a logical transition. And he turned out to be just a wonderful partner. And the board, ultimately went through their process. And we ended up with, I think one of the smoothest transitions, although 2020, as you know, was the year of the pandemic. And they asked me to please stay on a little bit longer, which I did, of course. And it turned out to be really the right decision for so many reasons.

[00:04:38] Dr. Gary Bisbee: Have you found anything out in the last 18 months that was somewhat different than you might have expected either personally or professionally?

[00:04:48] Sandra Fenwick: Absolutely. I’m still honored that people call on me. Back at the hospital. They named an institute in my honor when I left around pediatric health equity. And I was asked to be the honorary external advisory board chair, and I’ve been mentoring the the executive leader of that, who’s a wonderful physician deeply committed to the effort, and it’s just been wonderful to stay connected. but also I, I love when someone says, Oh, thank you. That was so helpful. And you realize, you really still have things of value to impart. And then, reconnecting with so many people, Gary like you and staying involved with. Professional colleagues. And you know what’s really funny? We talk a lot about, whatever of the board or the issue that we’re talking about from a, business standpoint. But then we all talk about our families and our grandkids and, you realize how much people really, truly at this phase really love going back and reconnecting with the things that they have had to, a little bit put to the side.

[00:05:55] Dr. Gary Bisbee: Well said, Sandy. Thank you so much for this interview. It is great to connect and it’s also great to see how you’re flourishing in. This new career is being retired, so well done.

[00:06:07] Sandra Fenwick: Thank you Gary. It’s a real pleasure always to be on one of your programs. Thank you for what you’re doing to, advance. Both the work that we all do but also new and emerging leaders, and I think that’s the most exciting thing that we can do is think about how to pay it forward and how to give back.

[00:06:26] Dr. Gary Bisbee: Thanks so much, Sandy.

[00:06:28] Sandra Fenwick: Take care, Gary.