Ghislaine ‘Gilly' Guez likes to say she took the long road to the Miller School. But at the end of that journey - which included five years as a medical writer in New York and three years of night science classes at Columbia University - she received not just the M.D. she initially set out for, but an M.B.A. as well.
In May, Guez became the first Miller School student to complete M.D./M.B.A. degrees since the dual program started in August 2008. She is perfectly positioned to pursue a career that mixes her passions for policy, administration and medicine.
The special M.B.A. for medical students is offered by the School of Business Administration and shares some classes with the school's successful Executive M.B.A. in Health Sector Management and Policy. The medical student M.B.A. is designed to be pursued between the third and fourth years of medical education, and Guez was one of two third-year medical students to sign up after the program launched; the other student delayed his studies and will graduate next year with nine others who joined the program in its second year.
"I knew when I started medical school that I wanted to do something in policy and administration, and the M.B.A. for medical students started just in time," said Guez. "I even tell that to prospective applicants when I am asked to speak to them about the program. You invest another year, but I feel it's worth the extra cost and the extra hours of study."
Guez admits the program was rigorous, made all the more so because of her extracurricular activities, which included writing four published papers with faculty members and co-founding the Ethics and Humanities Pathway. The payoff kept her in a euphoric state the week of commencement.
"I am so excited, I am dragging my family to both commencement ceremonies," said Guez, who crossed the stage at the M.D. ceremony on May 15 and at the M.B.A. ceremony two days earlier. "I see it as a time to celebrate all the work I put in over the years."
Still, while being the first to simultaneously graduate with both degrees, Guez knows the best is yet to come. "I think more about what good I'll be able to do with the great training I received, especially at this time of health care reform."
Guez, who grew up in South Florida and Paris, France, and studied psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, isn't planning every step of her life. She has goals, though, that include practicing medicine and working in the policy arena, an ideal career track for her newly minted degrees. Most immediately, she's heading to residency at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where she'll be among the first residents in a new Executive Leadership Pathway designed for new residents with both M.D.s and M.B.A.s. While all her residency interviewers were impressed with her dual degree status, Dartmouth's new program won her over.
Ultimately, Guez says, she could end up in academic medicine, research, administration, or in a government organization such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"I really feel I will always have job opportunities because of my background," Guez said. "This a fantastic medical school, but adding the M.B.A. made studying here even more worthwhile. I'm not sure that students in other M.D./M.B.A. programs get to take some of their classes alongside people in the executive program. Some of my classmates have been in the insurance industry for 25 years, or doctors who have been attending physicians for a decade."
Upon reflection, Guez likes to think that her long journey to medical school was actually perfectly timed and she wouldn't have done it any other way. Those years writing about medical procedures, she says, motivated her to learn to "do" those procedures. And it was fortuitous that the dual degree was introduced at the Miller School while she was a student.
"I became interested in the idea of helping to change health care early on," she says. "I wasn't sure how, but this journey is what's going to allow me to make a contribution. I feel I have been prepared well for what is to come next."
