BackTable Urology
Ep. 211 Mentorship and Growth Through the Society of Women in Urology with Dr. Simone Thavaseelan and Dr. Akanksha Mehta
Tue, 28 Jan 2025
We are excited to introduce a new collaboration with the Society of Women in Urology (SWIU)! In this episode of BackTable Urology, guest host Dr. Casey Seideman discusses the impact of SWIU with society leadership Dr. Akanksha Mehta and Dr. Simone Thavaseelan. --- This podcast is supported by: Boston Scientific UroAdvance http://bostonscientific.com/uroadvance --- SYNPOSIS The doctors talk about SWIU's rapid growth, its role in networking and career development for women, and its proven impact across career stages. They highlight the importance of the annual Clinical Mentoring Conference, which provides a unique opportunity for networking and professional development. The conversation also underscores SWIU's inclusivity and efforts for gender-diverse individuals. Looking ahead, Dr. Mehta and Dr. Thavaseelan predict continued growth, innovation, and deeper integration in organized urology. --- TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Introduction 02:42 - History of SWIU 03:29 - Personal Journeys with SWIU 07:08 - The Mentoring Conference 09:27 - Career Development 34:40 - Inclusivity and Male Allyship 39:14 - Conclusion --- RESOURCES Boston Scientific https://www.bostonscientific.com/en-US/medical-specialties/urology/products.html Society of Women in Urology https://swiu.org/home.aspx
This week on the Backtable Podcast.
What we don't get anywhere else is the networking and the career development and the ability to reach out to somebody who has succeeded in an aspect of their career to ask, how did you do it? And what were the pitfalls? And how could you help me get there too? And that's a void that this society fills that no other subspecialty fills for all of us.
And that, I think, has been the secret sauce to why this organization has been growing exponentially and attracting more and more members from really the full kind of career trajectory of urology, from medical students to residents, but also women who are in practice, early practice for sure, but also mid-career and late career. You know, we're really trying to draw in everybody.
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Now, back to the show.
I'm your host today, Dr. Casey Seidman. Welcome to our new collaborative series between the Society of Women in Urology and Backtable Urology. I'm excited to be joined today by two very special guests, Dr. Akanksha Mehta, who is the past president of SWU and an associate professor of urology and the program director of the residency program at Emory University.
and Dr. Simone Thavasilin, professor of urology at Brown, also the program director of their urology residency and the current SWU president. Welcome. Thanks for having us. Happy to be here. I'm so excited to have you both join and to introduce this new collaborative series between SWU and Backtable Urology.
I thought it would be fun just for the listeners to learn a little bit about SWU for our first episode. And so that's why I've strategically invited the past president and president of the organization. For those who don't know the history of SWU, SWU had really humble beginnings back in 1980 when Dr. Jean Forcroy and four other women in urology had an informal get together at the AUA.
These informal gatherings continued on a yearly basis at the meeting with the intent of supporting, promoting, and sponsoring women. In 1992, the group became formalized with an executive committee in bylaws, and in 2012, SWU hosted its first clinical mentoring conference. Now, in the year 2024, it has over 1,800 members.
That's quite a growth since starting with five, including faculty, trainees, and students from actually around the world. I thought it would be really great if you both would tell me a little bit about how you first got involved with SWOO and how you then ascended to become president.
I actually got involved with SWOO because I was invited to speak at one of the SWOO meetings. This was the Scottsdale meeting. And I must have been, you know, five or six years into clinical practice at the time. There were very few women faculty at Emory Urology at the time. So I was really looking for broader mentorship in the urology community.
I didn't know very much about this organization at all other than the fact that it existed. And it ended up being such a fantastic meeting, completely different from any other urologic meeting that I had ever attended. There was so much camaraderie. There was so much support. There was urology, of course, but there was so much more than just urology.
And they happened to announce at the meeting that there was a position open on the board. I spoke with some of the board members about what that is. entailed and ended up applying and joining the board. And it's been a fantastic ride. I mean, the board has changed so much. The organization has changed so much during my time on the board. All for the better.
I think that women urology as a community is growing and SWU is growing as an organization in parallel with that. So it's been really, really wonderful to see that change.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
And what I quickly realized was my experience was very common to women in neurology, and that really created community for me.
You guys said it so perfectly. I will say I have to admit my first clinical mentoring conference was very powerful. I was fangirling over you both. I was so excited to meet you in person and to connect with you. I feel like the mentoring conference is a really special conference that's held every year.
It's such an amazing opportunity to really let your guard down or let your armor down and connect with people across the country. They may be in different areas of urology or different walks of their training, but it's really powerful.
Could you tell me a little bit about what makes the mentoring conference so special, especially for folks who might not have ever attended but have been kind of curious about it?
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.
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.
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.
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,
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...
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.
Yeah, my answer would be very similar. You know, I think the success of an organization like SWOO has come from the fact that it has changed a lot since its inception. And the mission and the flavor of the meetings has also changed. The early meetings and probably this is the reason why many of us didn't know about this organization, were focused on, you know, urology as a clinical practice.
And they were themed in the sense that there would be an endourology or a female urology or a infertility sexual medicine focus to the program. And there were tremendous, you know, female urology speakers at those meetings who practiced in that subspecialty. But the flavor of the meetings has changed to focus more on career development.
And that's really what the membership wanted and needed and wasn't getting at the other professional society meetings. We are all members of the AUA or whatever other subspecialty organization that we belong to. And We fill our tank in terms of that subspecialty knowledge at those meetings.
But what we don't get anywhere else is the networking and the career development and the ability to reach out to somebody who has succeeded in an aspect of their career to ask, how did you do it? And what were the pitfalls? And how could you help me get there too? And that's a void that this society fills that no other subspecialty fills for all of us.
And that, I think, has been the secret sauce to why this organization has been growing exponentially and attracting more and more members from really the full kind of career trajectory of urology, from medical students to residents, but also women who are in practice, early practice for sure, but also mid-career and late career. We're really trying to draw in
everybody and have a space where people feel that they have a role, you know, either as a mentor or a mentee or both.
I love that so much. I think there's really two big things that I take away from the clinical mentoring conference. Number one is this ability to discuss the quote unquote hidden curriculum, right? How do you succeed as a woman or a gender diverse individual in urology when you make up 10% of practicing urologists?
And there's actually a lot of nuance to that and living that experience and hearing stories from women who have done it before is really powerful. But also meeting people in real life and having the opportunity to eat dinner across from somebody who you might never have interfaced with on a regular basis is really powerful as well.
I think it's been really a great starter or catalyst for people's careers to be able to meet at this conference and then carry those relationships out into other aspects. What connections have you made through SWOO that have been helpful for your career? Or what are some of the things that SWOO has done very purposely to help promote the careers of women in urology?
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.
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.
It keeps you in the game, if you will, of trying to figure out what matters to the early career urologist.
I would echo everything Simone says. And I think as the footprint of the organization has grown, it has become a powerful voice at the national level and on the national scene to advance some of the issues that are important to women urologists. You for AUA-related advocacy issues.
We have a presence at the AUA national meeting, whether it comes to courses or content programming or providing input into what the meeting schedule should look like and what topics should be part of the focus of each annual program. I mean, that's tremendous. I think
That was not always the case, but I see great value in the partnership that the AUA has looked at with our organization, as well as with the other subspecialty societies who started maintaining a speaker database a few years ago. And initially, before the word got out, it was used pretty sporadically. And now I feel like we have a request for the speaker database
Every month, if not more than once every month. So it does get our membership out there as potential speakers, as really leaders in their field, which is, of course, one of the missions of our organization. And I think we do it well.
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.
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.
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.
I'm so glad that you brought up the task forces and the speaker database. And so the speaker database is very near and dear to my heart because how many times have you seen a panel of folks without any women representing? And you might ask, you know, why that is. And a lot of times the response you get is, well, we don't know any women or there are no qualified women.
And that might be true based on who you know and what your sort of network is. But if you have access to this database, it's very powerful because we are a minority in the world of urology.
And so here's a list that we can present to you of a variety of women who are experts on these topics that you can choose from for your next meeting so that you don't have to be exclusive with your sort of panels. I think that that's a really very well orchestrated way to help promote women in urology. And the task forces all accomplish something very similarly.
So for me, I was part of the Women in Publishing Task Force, and that gave me this once in a lifetime opportunity to be an editor for the Gold Journal. which has been really formative for my career and just a really wonderful learning experience that absolutely came through my work with SWU and the opportunities that SWU creates for its members.
And so there's a lot of opportunities within SWU for leadership, and those leadership opportunities can translate to national positions, national recognition, and honestly, Once you start, you can't stop. It's like drinking from a fire hose, as you both know.
So I'm just really excited that we get to share that with our listeners who may not be as familiar with the task forces and some of the other missions of SWOO.
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.
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
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.
This segues perfectly into the next question that I have for you both. I have noticed so many more medical students and residents being interested and actively involved in SWOO. from both webinars and they're having their own journal clubs, they're attending the mentoring conference.
Why do you think or how do you think SWOO is important for residents and trainees and how is that evolving in the SWOO mission?
It's an interesting question because, you know, I think it's sort of a catch-22. You don't realize what's important until you get into that. role and you realize what you're missing. You know, so Simone and I probably both trained at the time when there were even fewer women residents in urology.
And it was sort of a prize commodity having one or two in your program that you could relate to or who understood the struggles you were going through. And now there are so many more, which is wonderful to see. I think when applicants are applying into urology, they may not quite
fully grasp the value of having a program that has a strong representation in terms of women residents or even women faculty, but it does make a difference. And having a forum for residents through SWOO really helps bolster how important that is because sometimes residents will end up at a program, you know, not realizing that they're entering a program where there are very few women colleagues.
And Sewell provides them with a space that they can really pursue all of those questions, concerns, projects, queries that they would have otherwise been able to pursue within their program. But even for those trainees who have strong women representation at their program, I think this is an outlet to them.
see what else is happening in the national landscape, how other programs do things better or worse, what they can learn from other trainees, and to build some of these relationships very early on. We have been talking about how we got to know some of the greats in urology after having been in practice.
Well, wouldn't it be nice to have known a great in urology as a co-resident or a co-medical student? Totally different flavor. So I think it's a tremendous space for fostering those kinds of relationships.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When I was at the meeting last year, a medical student came up to me and introduced herself and gave me her card and told me that she would love to connect. And she did. She sent me an email. She was really wonderful. It fostered a really great sort of mentorship, sponsorship, relationship.
And it really dawned on me that this was a very unique opportunity because here's a person who lives on the other side of the country who I would have never interfaced with otherwise. who now I feel like I have a really strong relationship with just from this happenstance encounter at a SWU mentorship meeting. I think that that's something particularly unique to SWU.
I don't think you have that same opportunity at larger national meetings or society meetings. They're not as focused on the mentorship and sponsorship aspect. So I really think that there's a special ingredient there that allows for women to
And sort of trainees, medical students, faculty, even retired faculty to connect across borders and really foster these networks that otherwise might not have ever happened. Very empowering. I love it.
The other side of that coin, though, and this is something that Dr. Savasilan mentioned, is that there is also a lot of attention that's coming up about mid-career urologists, especially women and gender diverse individuals. When you hit your mid-career, there is this risk that you either plateau or peter out because you may not have the same opportunities that maybe you had in that
early career ramp up. What can SWU do or what value does SWU have for people in their mid-career? How can we support mid-career urologists?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
You know, I think the key, for me at least, has been, as I was trying to figure out my own mid-career piece, was the direction that you want your career to grow in. And you don't realize how many possible directions there are until I think you get into your mid-career phase because you are so focused in your early career phase on building your practice,
If you're at an academic center, perhaps building your academic credentials, or if you're in private practice, maybe building your referral base. But once you hit that mid-career stride, then you start to look for something beyond just clinical medicine. And some of it is all about, you know, what gives you purpose. But even...
Whether you wish to stay in academia or wish to stay in the private practice setting, there are many ways to help your career grow. For me, what was most helpful was conversations with other women who were doing lots of different things in urology. You know, maybe they were chairs, but chairs.
Maybe they were CMOs, or maybe they were really intentional about their service roles in organizations like the AUA or other subspecialty societies. And there are pros and cons to all of that. You cannot possibly do it all, so you have to pick and choose. But it gives you a flavor of offering, so to speak. And I think Simone made a really good point about allyship.
The network that I have created within SWU has also extended to people outside of SWU, including the men in urology. And I have found that I've built relationships with people I would otherwise, again, never have crossed paths with, whether we taught a course together or were nominated to be on some committee together or participated in some kind of like joint AUA level course. think together.
And they have become, you know, a sounding board for some of my concerns. Again, somebody outside of my immediate sphere who is very neutral. Those are people that I have received some of the best advice from. And for that, I'm really thankful.
I remember a couple of years ago at a SWU conference, Dr. Kirsten Green gave a talk on how to interview for chair positions. And that was a really eye-opening talk for me to listen to because she basically told us her story. She's the chair at UVA. But she also told us about the process.
And just by talking about it, it really unlocked something in my brain that was like, how many women in this audience want to be chair people? And how can I dedicate myself to promoting women to achieving that goal? And so oftentimes, once you hit certain years in practice, you'll start to get these emails from across the country asking you to recommend people for positions.
And it really sparked my interest thinking, how many people do we not know who are interested in these positions? And how can we help these people unlock their potential to actually achieve this goal? And I think SWOO did something really special in that moment by opening up that conversation. Obviously, not everybody wants to be a chairperson.
And a lot of chair people these days would caution you against it. But I think it's actually a great it's a great conversation to have with this group to sort of demystify it, make it look sort of attainable, achievable, connect you with people who have done it before you and just allow these goals to sort of take place. Very powerful.
I remember that session. I actually remember thinking, gosh, this is a great talk because you could apply it to any path, not just chair, but maybe you want to be section president or maybe you want to have a leadership role at the school of medicine or the hospital that you work at. Similar process, right? Lots of preparation that goes into it, some unknown, some uncomfortable prep process.
but has to be done.
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.
And I remember thinking how powerful it will be for her to stand at the podium and
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
How many times when you invite a woman to be a speaker, do they ask you if you're sure you want them or they don't necessarily think that they're the right person? Is that something that you encounter frequently when you invite people to speak?
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.
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.
You do it very well. And yet I still don't like it. I want to ask you both, what is your prediction for the future of SWU? Where do you see SWU going over the next 10, 20 years?
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.
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.
Yeah, I mean, related to what I was saying earlier, I think the needs of the incoming generation of urologists are going to be different than what they were for us. I hope, you know, I hope that they will not be fighting some of the same battles that women were fighting as urologists. 20, 30 years ago, even 10 years ago. So that will be wonderful to see that they have less to worry about.
I think it will open up the space for, yeah, some innovation, some creativity, and probably setting the stage for organized urology in a continue to play a huge role with state society, I mean, state societies, regional urology organizations, and AUA at the national level, I would hope that this organization just becomes an integral part of organized urology in all those different spheres.
I agree. I think that SWOO is already an infiltrative part, to be honest, and I just see it growing. It's such a well-organized machine with the task forces, with the integration of medical students, with both an online way of staying in touch through webinars and through mentorship, but also an in-person mentoring conference.
I think that SWOO has done an extraordinary job of finding a way to touch people that are coming from different places in their career. I think that it will continue to do that. And I think that it will continue to meet the needs of its community. I also think that SWOO might be thought of as kind of an exclusionary group. You know, the Society of Women in Urology.
might evoke the thought that maybe men aren't a part of this group or gender diverse individuals may not feel welcome. Dr. Mehta, you mentioned earlier that SWOO has opened up the doors, not just for women, but with some of your male colleagues. I'm going to ask you very pointedly, how can our male colleagues support and participate in the SWOO mission?
And how can SWOO be more inclusive of gender diverse individuals as well?
Yeah, first of all, I just want to make it very clear for all of the listeners that this is not an exclusionary society. You know, this society was born out of a need to support women who were in the field of urology because it was a small minority, but it was not set up with the intent to exclude others. We do have male members of our society, which is great.
And I think attendance of male urologists at our meeting, particularly the AUA, based SWOO meeting has grown tremendously over the past few years. Part of it is because the content is appealing, but part of it is also because as an organization, we have deliberately reached out to invite our colleagues, our allies, those urologists with whom we feel already a sense of camaraderie and support.
And I think as the word gets out that A cadre of individuals is going to continue to grow. So much of the work that comes out of our professional organization is applicable to women, but also to the urology community at large. I mean, we have done, our task force have focused on like census work and working with industry and how do you attract the best and the brightest people.
talent, residents in urology, how do you make sure you reduce bias? I mean, these are not things that are relevant just to women or minority groups in urology. They're relevant to all of urology. So I think seeing the importance of some of the causes that we have embraced is going to be the key to get more people involved.
I don't think as a society we could have flourished as much as we have if we didn't have support from our male colleagues. So I think that support has always been there, perhaps a little bit behind the scenes, but we would love to see more of it at the forefront as well.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
I agree. I think there needs to be collaborative efforts to support women and gender diverse individuals in urology. I think that we won't be successful if we all do it alone.
And I think being inclusive and listening to each other, inviting each other to the AUA meeting has been a really powerful way of sort of opening up some of these conversations and showing the world that we are an open organization. We're happy to have you join as a member. We're happy to have your support.
And we really want you to attend and network with us and get to know us and learn how we can help each other. I want to be mindful of time. I don't want to keep you for much longer. I'm going to ask you to end with one quick thought. What is your favorite SWOO memory?
I remember Paulina Ray Blatt giving a talk where she told us to plant mint. And to this day, every time I pick mint in my backyard, I remember that meeting.
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.
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.
Well, my favorite memory revolves around food. So that's all you need to know about me. But I just remember one of the first times we all went out to dinner as a group after the meeting and just kind of were able to connect about our lives and our lived experiences and realize that there was a lot of shared experience amongst us. It was just a really wonderful opportunity.
And so I thank you both so much for all of the work that you've done for SWOO. For the listeners, I think that you may not know, but these folks are doing a lot of work, many extra hours spent organizing, communicating, setting things up, putting out fires. So thank you for your dedication and your hard work. And thank you for being the inaugural guests on our first SWOO Backtable podcast.
Awesome. Thanks so much for having us, Casey. Thank you.
All right.
That's a wrap. Thank you.
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