49 Coaching Client Spotlight: Eugenia C. South, MD MS

Dr. Eugenia C. South is an Assistant Professor at Penn Medicine, Faculty Director of the Urban Health Lab, and Vice Chair for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity in the Department of Emergency Medicine. Her work focuses on dismantling structural racism through research and action. She is also an alumnae of our (one-time only!) Reclaim Retreat and the Get That Grant coaching program. 

Take a listen to hear some real behind the scenes of her coaching journey: 

• What it felt like to be in a deficit mindset and feel shame while externally looking successful 
• The significance of completing an audit on her projects and supporters led to owning her value
• How stepping out in courage and giving BACK a funded grant empowered her to focus on the opportunities more aligned with her purpose
• The actual process of using a coaching tool that resulted in an Op-Ed and a multi-million dollar grant
• What changed that caused her to go from publishing 1 paper in a year to 12 papers in a year and now having an overflow of grant funds to support her mission 

If you loved this convo, please go find Gina on Twitter (@Eugenia_South) and show her some love!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

I think a lot of people are familiar with this concept of blocking time in a calendar, but yeah, we protect the time. Gina, Gina, tell the masses, tell the masses. It's like people like, oh, I tried that. It doesn't work. I'm like, no, it works. You just didn't actually do it because you don't protect the time.

UNKNOWN: 0:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

Hello, hello. You are listening to your unapologetic career. Being a woman of color faculty in academic medicine who wants to make a real difference with your career can be tough. Listen, these systems are not built for us, but that doesn't mean we can't make them work for us. In each episode, I'll be taking a deep dive into one core growth strategy so you can gain confidence and effectiveness in pursuing the dream career you worked so hard to achieve. All you have to do is tune in to your unapologetic career with me, your host, Kemi Dole, physician, surgeon, researcher, coach, and career strategist for an always authentic, sometimes a little raw, but unapologetically empowering word. I keep it real for you because I want you to win. Hello, so I get so many questions along the lines of, How can I work with you? You're changing my life and I want more of this. And if you fall into that category and you are a woman of color, faculty member in academic medicine, public health, or allied fields, then just keep listening. Listen, are you building the academic career you want or hard at work checking boxes on everyone else's to-do list? A successful career doing the work you love doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your values, your family, or your joy. Stop trying to be everything to everybody and get to learning the strategies that will 3X your productivity, hone your passions into funded projects, and create the career you worked so hard to achieve. If you've been to every career development and professional development workshop that sounded great, but didn't actually deal with the kind of institutional pressures you face. If you're working hard, but somehow stuck in inefficiency, putting everyone else's priorities first. If you spent years trying training and sacrificing to become academic faculty. And here you are still working nights and weekends on the projects you care most about. I'm here to tell you that you can walk away from this institutional mindset forever and take control of your career with clarity and strategy. Every day, I help women of color faculty of all career levels in academic medicine, like you, reframe and recreate their academic life so that they can channel their ideas, passions, and skills into grant funded work with institutional support and sustainability. And that is why this episode is brought to you by Get That Grant, our six month high performance coaching program for high achieving women of color faculty in academic medicine who are ready to reclaim career control and secure grant funding doing the work they love. In Get That Grant, we help you kick imposter syndrome to the curb for good. So you lead your career with clarity and confidence. You learn productivity and strategy skills for grants and papers to maximize your chances of success without wasting your time, abandoning your passion, or working yourself into the ground. We help you build the foundation for an amazing and fulfilling academic career, changing your life and the lives of everyone your work will touch. Yes, this future is possible for you, and it's waiting on you to make the first step. If you are ready for career success without sacrifice, I encourage you to join our waitlist at chemidol.com backslash grant. After you join the waitlist, you'll be notified when the next Get That Grant cohort will be enrolling. Your application process will include an in-depth career foundations assessment, helping you identify the gaps in your foundation that are holding you back from enjoying the career you worked so hard to achieve. No more secret worrying that the career you want isn't really possible. This career assessment will show you exactly where you need to focus to level up your Hello, hello, Gina. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, Kemi. Thanks for having me. Oh, I'm so glad that you decided to do this. Before we get started, why don't you tell me and all of our listeners, what is your specialty? Where do you work? And what is the good work you're doing in the world? Yes. So I am a physician, scientist, writer thought leader. Oh, okay. I've expanded what I do. Yes. So I am an assistant professor in emergency medicine at Penn Medicine. And as far as what I do, I would say that all of my work really ties back to dismantling structural racism. I do that through research and action for my role as faculty director of the Urban Health Lab. I do that through my DEI A work. And I've done that most of my career, but more formally, I've been compensated for that work. September of 2020, and I'm the vice chair for inclusion, diversity, and equity in my department. Incredible. Incredible. I know I'm not alone when I say all the titles that you opened up with are fully deserved. Thank you. There's a couple more that are just waiting for you, girl. We all ready to celebrate. They're just waiting for you right around the corner. And I think that what is so incredible is that you been doing this work. Like you said, you've been, you've been doing the DEI work uncompensated, but not quietly. Like you've been doing this work for many, many years. And as we all look at your work and the research that comes out, it just is like, this person has it together. She is very creative. She executes well, like she's good. And yet I'm curious, where were you in your career when you started to consider coaching and what wasn't working for you? What were we not seeing? So I'm so excited to talk about this and it was fun to reflect on this because there always is the success that people see. Knowing the story behind that and knowing when people were in places where they weren't outwardly successful, it's motivating to me. So I think I will start with the summer of 2020 and say So we were at the beginning of the pandemic and, you know, those first few months of the pandemic were incredibly hard as they were for everyone. For me, I had three little kids at home, the oldest of which was suddenly in virtual kindergarten. Oh my gosh. And, you know, we didn't have, we lost most of our childcare. So my husband were at home doing full-time child caring and trying to work. I know you can relate to that. Deeply. And then also, you know, with my clinical work at the time, there was so much uncertainty. I felt unsafe going to work for the first time in my life. And we were also getting, you know, 15 emails a day about changing protocols and do this, do that, call this person to get a COVID test, do this. And so there was like cognitive overload and this just deep sense of being unsettled. Then later on top of that, May 25th, George Floyd is murdered. And, you know, that both wrecked me, but also lit a fire under me and some of my colleagues at Penn Medicine. And so we went into overdrive to really try to push our institution in that moment. All of that to say is that by that summer, I was exhausted and just taking a step back, looking at where I was with my research and realizing I needed a change. During the 2019-2020 year, I had one publication. And that was a middle author publication. So I didn't actually even have any first author publications for a full year. And my main job is being a researcher. And as a pre-promotion, I'm at the prime of the time where I'm supposed to be producing, producing papers, getting grants, all of this. And so I was ashamed. Honestly, I was in this place of experiencing shame because I didn't feel like everything I had been doing had been producing the main thing that it was supposed to produce. Mm-hmm. So then I saw an advertisement on Twitter for the Reclaim Retreat. Yes. And this is the summer of 2020. And so I had been considering coaching before that. I actually went back to my email to say, when did I first send Kemi a DM to find out about coaching? And it was in November of 2019. Okay. So that's when I first considered it. But I think I wasn't ready for it at the time. In all honesty, initially finding out the price, the cost of coaching, like, whoa, that is not what I Yep. It just feels like too much. I can't, you know, spend that much money on something like coaching. Yes. So, which we can unpack that later. But I think that I knew I was just, it was exhausted. I was feeling the shame and being unhappy with the lack of like air quotes productivity. And so I knew I needed something different and this opportunity for a one day retreat came up. And so I jumped on it because I don't know what it is. I had no idea, but I knew I needed something. And so I just put it out. Like, let me just try this and see what happens. First of all, I love all of the Reclaim folks. For those of you listening, Reclaim happened one time. Don't ask me what's happening again. Every time y'all post and celebrate each other, I get 16 DMs like, when is the next Reclaim retreat? And I'm like, you know, that was my 2020 experimentation, right? Recognizing like, oh, people need help. This is like, people are not in a good space like what could we do what how could I change like how could I get in and offer more of myself and what I do to people but I love that energy because what I hear you saying is that like you reach the point where you're like it can't continue like this like I don't know what I need but it can't continue like this I'm actually ashamed of where I am which is crazy considering how much I've accomplished right and how I've gotten here but like I do not have the things to show for it that I'm supposed to this is supposed to be my job and And I also hear that at the same time, though, there's this hesitancy around how much am I going to invest in myself? How much am I going to invest in this change? And Reclaim was a way to dip your toe in. Like, okay, let me do this one day and see what happens. So tell us, Gina, what happened? What happened on the one day? Well, oh my goodness. That Reclaim was like this huge jolt for me. It was like a rupture. how I thought about myself, my career. And it's like, once that rupture happens, you can't go back to be able to stay. You can't. You can't. You can't go back. And so it was, it was incredible. I'm so happy to hear that. Reclaim August, 2020. We'll go down in history. So you do reclaim and then you decide something shifts because like you said, you have this cosmic experience and then you do decide to enroll and get that grant so we'll come back to those that decisions later but I'm curious now like can you remember a moment and get that grant where something shifted for you in a big way and would you be willing to share one of those times with us yeah so I would say for me get that grant was like a series of small shifts when I got to the end of it I looked back and saw this massive shift but then like one thing that was a huge huge shift I think I think part of those because Reclaim for me, that was like, yeah, that was your moment. Yes, that was my massive moment. So a couple of the smaller shifts that I think were really impactful. So something that you say over and over again in coaching is that we are all sort of high achieving women and that we have everything we need and that we bring a unique value to the table. And so starting from that place of strength and you like reinforce that over and over again, it's never a question. Can you do this? I didn't even realize I needed that because I think the truth was that I was working from a deficit perspective. I was always trying to sort of prove value and prove what I was doing. And that's why I felt that shame in the fact that I had one publication. And so I think that reinforcement that I have that innate value in who I am and what I bring to the table that I don't have anything to prove, that's one thing. I think another thing is, you know, we started off Get That Grant with defining our purpose and allowing everything to flow from there. And I had never done that before. I sort of knew what my purpose was, but that wasn't, I didn't see that as like the driving force for everything that I do and all the decisions I make. And so I want to actually read like one of my, I came up with during this time we did this. And so I said, I'm here to dismiss Thank you so much. Yes. Yes. Yes. ready to translate that into a grant. And so I literally had so much fun writing this grant. It was exactly what I believed in, what I want to do. And I have an amazing MPI, I think Ben Kataramini, who I worked with and who has a lot of the same values and beliefs. But I don't think I would have been ready to write that grant if I hadn't sat down and known my purpose. And then the third thing, this is again, getting like the small shifts that led up to big shifts. We spent time doing inventory I'm sorry. It's always a juicy time and get that grant. The inventory. So it's an inventory on projects, inventory on people. And so the inventory on projects, first of all, this was like revolutionary. Based on that, I actually gave back a$20,000 internal pen pilot grant that had just been like dragging me down And at this time, keep in mind, I didn't have all the grant money that I have now. Right. Right. This was stepping out on courage. This was stepping out on courage to say, this is sucking up my energy. I don't want to work on this. It doesn't align with my purpose. And so I'm going to do the radical thing of giving money back. Yes. And I haven't regretted it for a second. It was, it freed up mental space and energy and like physical time. So, so then the people, it's the big one. I again, never, ever had occurred to me to really do an audit of the people in my life. Yeah. My career life, my work life. And so I really, I did this audit of current mentors and also just people who I interacted with, you know, frequently. Yes. And I shed some people who I just realized were not good for me. As my husband says, they were not on team Gina. There you go. And so one person who I had fairly regular contact with, I just decided to stop meeting with this person. And first of all, what a mental relief because I realized I was constantly trying to prove myself to this person. Yep. Meticulously planning for meetings, like doing the things and never getting anything back. But the other thing is I literally never heard from this person again. Oh my God. That's the thing. Yes. It reinforces how little, I didn't mean anything to them and Me being able to release that, there actually were no negative consequences to that. Anyway, I'll stop there. I could go on, but. I mean, these are big things. Like you said, these are small. These are huge things. One, like you said, we talk about articulating your purpose, creating your purpose mantra, owning. I talk a lot about owning your value where it's like, it's one thing to say, oh, this is what I really want to do. I'm really excited about this. It's another thing to know that that's how I'm actually going to lead my career. And what was super fun about working with you as a coach is you do without delay. Your time, your time from like learning to action is very short. And so to go from January, January, February, I'm going to develop and crystallize this purpose to March. I'm writing an op-ed based on what I developed to May, June, I'm submitting a grant that's totally in the through line. Like that's amazing. And I think you've really identified it well, which is like, this is what owning your value looks like. It means that the literal decisions that you make, where you put your time and energy is aligned with the work you came here to do. And it's really sad to me that that's so radical because that's what we're supposed to be doing in these careers, but they're just not set up that way. The default is not set up that way. So I don't know. I kind of get chills. It's really exciting to hear because all of this was always possible. Here's the thing I want to emphasize. You didn't go get a new degree. You didn't go change institutions. You didn't have to go outside and find All of these different things that you didn't have. You shifted internally and then started behaving differently, taking actions based on that shift, moving people out of your life, adding people that were helpful in certain ways, stepping out on courage, shedding dead weight, projects that don't mean anything. If there's anything I want people to really hear, it's that there's so much potential with where you are right now. And the decisions that are available to you right now, if you choose to embark on a journey of personal growth. That is exactly right. Okay. So what do you have now that you didn't have before embarking on coaching? So one thing is just a community of women of color in academia. And like, I didn't even know how much I needed that. The Reclaim group is a great example because we have our WhatsApp thread and we are literally, not a week goes by that we haven't sent multiple messages to each other. And keep in mind, this was from a one day virtual retreat. One day, y'all, one. Yeah, there are two people that I've met in person on that thread, but mostly people I haven't. And the strongest connections, because now anytime something comes up, I can go to them and run it by them. I just did this last week. And so having that community is so important. It's especially as you're trying to do things differently. Yes. The environment around you in academia is still the same. Yes. And so you're making these changes and you're like pushing boundaries and trying to do things differently, but you're not going to get the support system. Exactly. Same environment. So you have to create this other support area to continue to affirm you, to run things by and people who like get it without having to explain. So that's one really important thing. I think another thing I have is a new filter through which to make decisions. And to this, it's hard for me to even remember back and know how was I making decisions? I don't know. I literally don't know. Yeah. It is scary, but that's why I was in the place that I was in. I mean, like, you know, the pandemic and George Floyd and all that, but I was in not a good place and a place of experiencing shame and lack of, you know, productivity that I wanted because I was was making decisions on how to spend my time with no filter and no method. So I really have like learned how to quickly make decisions and know if it's going to align with my purpose and further my short and long-term goals or not. That has become even more important now because now that I have experienced excessive grants and op-eds and TV, like the number of time has only gone up. Exactly. Yes. It's a skill you must have. You have to have it. Yes. Really would get nothing done and just, I don't know. So that has been invaluable. And it's, I continue to work on it. Like all of these things I have to say, I can work on. And part of the beauty is that I'm in the mindset of like constant growth now and iteration and making small tweaks here and there because things change. So that's another thing. Another thing is just the confidence to make the decisions, both big and small, that other people may not understand. Yeah. And so an example of this is something we've talked about is that right now I'm in the middle of taking a year off of clinical work. And that's, first of all, something I never would have even considered before going through this program and really understanding my value, understanding the purpose I have in this world and what I'm trying to do. And there are people for sure who don't understand my decision just to take a year off of clinical work. But it doesn't matter. most people even think what thought was possible of me keep those things directly because of all the things we have talking about knowing value knowing that i don't have anything to prove knowing my purpose and then aligning all of that has just led to all of these things happening for me and to me that i really directly attribute to my experience you know going through reclaim and and get that ground um i love it this is what i'm thinking i'm thinking somebody listening and they're going, okay, what changed that you went from, I only published one paper in a year to how many papers did you publish last year? I think I had 12 papers. Okay. So how do you go from one to 12? Cause I know you feel good and you got your purpose mantra up on the wall, girl. So that's wonderful. But like, help me understand how you went from one to 12 papers. What I guess what I say is how would you answer that question? Yes. So I think the first thing that I did, and this came from Reclaim, is to block time on my calendar, no meetings and do it at a time that I know I work best. Yep. And so in my calendar is called rock time. Came from something that we did at reclaim. Yes. Rocks, pebbles, stands people. So it's, it's in my calendar as rock time. I have actually over time, slowly increased the amount of rock time that I have on my calendar because what I saw early on is, okay, let me block off, you know, six hours a week. to do things and just to do, to think, to do. And it worked. You're like, wait a minute, what's going on? Why am I all of a sudden getting stuff done? It worked. And so now I have honestly, probably half of my time is blocked off in my calendar. Just for me to, it's open time. I learned, I can't have an hour or two of time. I really need many hours of open because that's just how my brain gets into the thinking work. And then the other thing is, I think a lot of people are familiar with this concept of blocking time in a calendar, but yeah, we protect the time. Gina, Gina, tell the masses, tell the masses. It's like people like, oh, I tried that. It doesn't work. I'm like, no, it works. You just didn't actually do it because you don't protect the time. You have to protect the time. So literally the only things that I will say yes to during those times are things with very high, high level people that Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Wait, hold on, Nina. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You preach it now. Listen, this is the thing. We think we can't protect that time because that means that we're saying no to people who are important or we're saying no to responsibilities that matter. And basically like the default thinking is that that's not really possible. You can't do that because you'll get in trouble. And what I always say is that it's really funny because you're not, your job is not to not get in trouble. Your job is to be productive. Right. meet with them when they're available will have a negative reaction. And all I have to say to that is that those people were never going to be critical people to support you in the work you need to do because their support was contingent on you being inconvenienced. Their support was contingent on you not being able to design a schedule that works for you. So I'm sorry. I went off on a rant, but I just wanted to emphasize that because I think before people get into this mindset, they literally think the exact opposite of what you said. which is like, there's no way I can protect this time because I will have negative consequences. And what you're saying is when I finally chose to do the personal growth and the work to protect this time, everything opened up for me. Exactly. Exactly. And the personal work is important, I think, for us because we are trained up in such a way that we don't understand our own value. We don't know our career. And so I don't think I could have made the change to protect my time if I didn't have the mindset growth and mindset shifts to go along with it. So that's like the reclaim retreat helped me, started me on that mindset shift pathway and then get that grant only like further accelerated. So I think every month and get that grant, I was like, I'm adding a little bit more time to rock time. Yes. Let me take another hour. Oh, I love it. Yes. Okay. So this kind of relates to our last question, but it's something that you brought up. So I feel like I want to tie it together. So my last question is about like, what advice would you give a Black faculty like you who just signed up for Get That Grant and they want to get the most out of it? But I would almost ask like that November 2019 Gina who reached out and was like, oh, wait a minute. This is expensive. I'm coaching, girl, coaching. No, not the coach purse, but coaching. So what do you say to that Gina now with what you know? I think I would say that you can continue to operate and move through your current work environment and your current mindset. And you probably will be successful because it's never that I doubted my success. So you probably will be successful, but at what cost? And if you keep going the way you're going now, you will just constantly be stuck in a place of never feeling like you've made it, never feeling like you're able to relax, never feeling like you can't work on the weekends or you can't work at night. And so, which by the way, I have almost stopped working on the weekends. So I mean, yeah, that's huge. And so the thing you say about having the career you want and the time you want to give it, I don't think I would have been able to do any of those things. So only you, can make the decision to take the steps to grab a hold of your career and have the career you want. But the other thing is that you don't have to do it alone. And that's the other thing I didn't realize back then because it's scary to try to do things differently and to feel like you're going to have to do it alone. But the beauty of coaching and in this group coaching format is that you are never alone. That is beautiful. You are never alone. We're not meant to do this alone. I I actually don't think anybody joined academics to be alone. It's like, it makes the isolation that a lot of us feel even more painful because we weren't people who wanted to come in and be isolated. We like came in to work in a group and it's really true. And the thing about the group is that like, it's like you said, that courage, courage and community is outsized compared to what you have to drum up only on your own. And we all do need to be seen and witnessed. Like we all do need to have belonging. And that's why I have so much empathy for anybody before this kind of journey, making the choices that they're making. Because I'm like, ultimately, you want to belong. I get that. That's a deeply felt human thing. I just am saying, do you want to belong to a career and culture that ultimately leads to burnout or settling? Those are your options. Settle for something you don't want or burnout. Or do you want to belong to a community where the bigness of your goals is not a problem? And the bigness of your goals is not in conflict with the life that you want to have. outside of work I'm so much more interested in that challenge always like that's all I'm just like so much more interested also we get more stuff look at what you've been able to accomplish I mean we get so much better work out of that and it's almost like it's like you free your mind and so you free your ideas and so then your ideas get more out of this world and then all of us benefit more yes so good Gina is there anything else you want to share with us you know I think I'm just I'm really grateful to you for cultivating this gift that you have for coaching. And I'm grateful to the women that I've gone through coaching with because truly it's just been such a transformative experience that I'm continuing on with and like my career and my life will never be the same. So I'm just truly thankful. You're so welcome. Thank you so much for your time today. And I hope you have a great, great time and we will see you soon. All right. Take care, Gina. Thank you so much for listening with me today. I appreciate your time as I know it's so valuable. I hope this episode was helpful to you and I hope you feel energized to go out and claim your unapologetic career. See you soon.