Dr. Simone Thavaseelan
Appearances
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
I would add also the fact that we have awards and recognition for our members. I think the recognition of women in urology lags a bit because, again, the issues of implication and visibility of their work, be it publishing or speakerships. And so SU is an avenue for that.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And we also do a number of small grants for both research projects and travel awards, which some people know about and others do not. And so we try to spread the message from a trainee perspective to residents to allow to attend our meeting through
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
Society of Academic Urology and program directors to be aware and know that we're interested in sponsoring the costs associated with the financial burden of making our meeting. But these are also, you know, monetary ways in which we're trying to support our membership.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
We do some pretty deliberate mentoring at the conference, including one-on-one resident or student and practicing urologist pairing during the meeting, in addition to speed mentoring, in addition to kind of some pre-mixing prior to the meeting. So we do place a large emphasis on networking and that mentorship piece of it.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And I think for both students and residents who are looking to get involved in the organization, I think it gives you an early entry into professional society work, which for me has been really satisfying as I look over the course of my decade plus career.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
Some of the work I've done within professional societies has been really meaningful because it's been an opportunity to enact change at a national level. And when things are sometimes difficult at home or locally, or you might be running into roadblocks, it's nice to have an avenue at the national level where you can have impact and Although maybe it's not clinically, but it is organizationally.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And I think for trainees and students building their networks, you know, identifying social resources, creating community, all of these will lay the groundwork for your future career, your future self.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
Yeah, you know, Nancy Spector out of Drexel runs this executive leadership program called ELAM and she publishes about mid-career invisibility. And the need for women who are at their mid-career to get a leadership opportunity that kind of has visibility to allow them to develop the skill set to then apply for the highest levels of leadership within medicine, including chair, dean.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
Chief Medical Officer positions. And so I think the needs at this point in career are vast. It's leadership training, it's preparation for transition or transition preparedness physically in terms of moving or perhaps seeking a different employment opportunity if the current one doesn't fit or is no longer right for you. It's strategic planning around your goals in your career.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
It's self-assessment of your strengths and weaknesses and really figuring out what does one want in their career now that they have a number of years of experience. You know, what do they really desire? Where do they want to have impact and spend their time and efforts? And then how do you get there? What's step number one to step number five? And I think some of that includes building your career.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
network around you of board of directors to give you that support to provide some of that guidance and sponsorship. And I think SWOO is early into doing this. Our cohort of late and mid-career women is relatively small, as is expected, because our organization is bottom-heavy. Whereas we might be 11% of practicing urologists, we're now 30% of trainees.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And so that's going to change over time, but it's slow. And so I think part of this is SWOO's efforts to make sure we are gaining effective allyship with leaders at the AUA so that the men in urology are poised to be successful allies for us. And the more we work with the AUA as an organization, the more I think the AUA sees the value of us as a method of making sure that
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
their work is properly diversified so that the voices of urologists are a diverse group. So I think in addition, our task force currently underway to help design initiatives and programming that's specific to mid-career will help us internally increase our offerings to this group of women.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
But some of the work we're doing with the outside organizations, I think, is that advocacy piece that we're doing at the professional society level.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
You know, the genesis of that talk, I had actually asked Dr. Green to give that talk in another meeting. I remember that talk too. I remember when I sent her the invite, she wrote back saying, are you sure that I'm the right person to give this talk? And my co-chair, Mark Litwin, who was chair at UCLA at the time, said, absolutely, you're the right person.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And I remember thinking how powerful it will be for her to stand at the podium and
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
and give this talk as one of only at the time five women chairs across the country and it was both for the women and the men in the audience and so it also shows you the seeds that we plant at these meetings you know the audience can take away what they will from it but it has legs it grows into something and it serves as inspiration you just never know who you're reaching at the time but i think that's also the fun of professional society work
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
I think it's imposter syndrome affects us all, right? And unless you have a cheerleader saying, yeah, you're absolutely the right person to give this talk or why not you, you have to have a kind of a continuous internal monologue that propels you forward sometimes. Especially to take steps where you don't feel ready to take and yet you take them not quite yet ready.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
I found towards the late part of early career, I really had to push myself out of my comfort zone to be willing to give national talks on topics when For example, public speaking really isn't something I enjoy, and yet it has been an avenue of career advancement that I now, looking back on it, feel like I had a lot of growth from.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
You know, I think of organizations in urology, we are the one with the largest amount of growth with the youngest members. And that is unique in a otherwise workforce that is really quite old. And so I think the incoming generation is going to innovate in terms of how they engage with each other.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
I think they're going to seamlessly and effortlessly build community in kind of both virtual and in-person ways and that they're going to innovate around those connections. I think they're also going to envision a professional career in urology that's more flexible and kind of more adaptive than I might have seen over the last 10 years. So I'm excited for all of that.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
Yeah, I think male allyship is critical for the success of women in urology and therefore our field and our patients, I think. We know men are the majority of our workforce and they hold power socially, relationally, resources, you know, their ability to mentor and sponsor and promote women can build their legacy. And I think one of the most important ways to grow power is to share power.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And so if there are men out here there who are listening, I think start by thinking small. Is the last paper or the paper you're about to write, including diverse folks on your authorship list, Or is your circle of mentorship and sponsorship diverse? Or how could you change that? And I think those are small strategies.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
I would also say, apart from attending our annual conference at the AUA, we have a speaker lined up this year, Brad Johnson, who is an expert in male allyship in the workplace. And I think he's going to share some really basics, like...
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
Being friends with women at work is one easy way to support women and colleagues and paying attention to some of that unshared burden of the workplace, be it how referrals are shared or how resources and staff and block time is allocated.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
All of these things are little things that really influence the success of women in practice, but they have colleagues shoulder to shoulder that can be supportive when they're trying to seek change in the issues that are affecting their success. I welcome the opportunity for men in neurology to be supportive because I do think it'll really increase their reach and their legacy in our field.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
For me, Dr. DeVries gave a kind of summary career speech where I was brought to tears to hear the decades of work that she had done, the arc of her professional activities, and how she had developed. kind of insight and reflection on those activities. I think when you're in the thick of it, the day-to-day, you're trying to balance everything, sometimes it feels hopeless.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And I just learned from that, that you get one opportunity to have a career and it's going to change over time. But as long as you're focusing on meaningful work and having an impact, we're really privileged to be urologists.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
My story is a little bit similar. I had heard of SWU, but I had never attended a meeting. And it had been typically on the West Coast, which had been a logistic barrier for me to attend. But one of the meetings came around to Fort Lauderdale. And so I registered and I specialized in endourology. And the meeting was run by Dr. Suzette Sutherland that year in 2017.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And she had done a meeting focused on female urology. And despite being an endourologist, I was still seeing a lot of women patients in practice and feeling like, I needed to increase a little bit of my kind of clinical expertise surrounding the care being delivered to women neurologists, even though it was outside of my subspecialty expertise. And I found it super useful clinically.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
I got to meet Ann Cameron and ask her how she manages recurrent urinary tract infections, which was something I was seeing at practice all the time, whether I wanted to or not, but I still wanted to be able to successfully, you know, manage. And I ended up meeting some of the godmothers of urology, you know, Dr. Martha Terrace, one of the first women chairs I'd ever met was there.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And I found it easier to network there than at some of the other national meetings that I was attending where I wanted to meet folks, but maybe just didn't feel quite the same level of ease in doing so. I'd also connected my PGY-3 at the time. One of my residents attended the meeting to a future sponsor when two years later, she was applying for fellowship. And
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
I knew that women in urology were my people. I was looking for them. And when I got to the SWOO meeting, I realized I had found them. I felt like a fangirl in some sense because there was a generation ahead of me that was small, but I recognized them. And then I'd go to the AUA and see them walking down the hallway and be like, you know, I met them at SWOO.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
that's who this is, you know, and I'd be telling my colleagues. I'm really blessed that I found Sue because I think sometimes you feel alone, I think, being a woman in neurology, or at least unique, right? And that some of the challenges and disparities you face within practice can feel overwhelming.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And what I quickly realized was my experience was very common to women in neurology, and that really created community for me.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
You know, I recently chaired the meeting last year, and we focused on the topic of leadership. And we've seen an evolution of the clinical mentoring conference over the years to really focus on professional development for women and curate content that's related to career advancement, career success planning. And I think all of these types of issues really are relevant to everyone.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
But segueing a little away from the clinical focus and more towards career, I think is useful for women neurologists. They can start to strategically plan their the early and mid and late career phases and figure out from their peers what is working and what's not working. And then we have this kind of cross-generational, cross-specialty mixing, which I think is also unique.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
You know, I met Dr. Angie Smith, who I would have otherwise really never crossed paths with as a surgical oncologist, but I was inspired by her leadership and really got the opportunity to meet a number of oncologists who I really feel like otherwise I wouldn't have overlapped with in any meaningful way.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And I think the fact that we have students and residents and faculty, both in private practice and in academics, attending the meeting really, uh,
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
It gives everyone an opportunity to see a couple years ahead of them, where they're at, what the issues are that they might face, get a little bit of anticipatory guidance and support about those issues, which range from how do you dictate your career, how do you build your referral pattern, how do you build your family, how do you tackle issues like salary equity or...
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
gender bias or meaningful work and burnout or leadership opportunities, all of which I think kind of speak to the highs and lows of career in urology and the fact that you need a lot of support to find the avenues that are going to give you passion and get you through those highs and those lows.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
Yeah, you know, for me, having met certain people along the way through SWOO has been, they've been meaningful friendships and relationships, both professionally and personally. I had mentioned Dr. Smith, Dr. Terrace, also Dr. Jada Thompson. She's in private practice in the Midwest, and we've never crossed paths without SWOO.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
and seeing her practice situation change over time has also been a real learning lesson for me in terms of how to manage transitions. I've also overlapped with resident trainees on the board in their leadership roles. And I think the power of those folks that are younger than us to reverse mentor us is also really useful.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
It keeps you in the game, if you will, of trying to figure out what matters to the early career urologist.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
We've had a couple other initiatives, you know, our task forces that have focused on a number of projects. But I think the real goal of the task forces are to bring women together and work on a topic that affects us in our career and to create change and network. And those topics have ranged from increasing women in publishing to addressing salary equity to education.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
improving the transition to parenting. And apart from the task forces, other initiatives that have also, I think, brought value to our members, apart from the speaker database, include the webinar series that we do on a monthly basis, which gives another touch point of contact apart from the annual meeting to our members on topics that are relevant.
BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
And then, you know, putting our money where our mouth is, giving those opportunities for national speakerships. to start to elevate and amplify the visibility of our women colleagues as they are kind of entering into their career or looking to make that next jump and looking for their next leadership opportunity that's going to launch their next opportunity.