Director of the Physician MBA Program
Career Coach
As physicians earn business skills in the Physician MBA Program to lead change in healthcare and pursue new roles, they’re also learning how to shape the career they want. The Career Management course guides physicians across all aspects of their professional journey, teaching them how to use career tools and their own strengths to feel empowered to market themselves for new opportunities.
Physicians are led in this course by a familiar face: Susannah Eastwick, the director of the Physician MBA who interviewed them when they enrolled in the program.
“It’s a natural life cycle. Because I’m part of their first touch point to the program, I get to understand each physician’s motivation, interest, and goals, what’s driving them to pursue an MBA at Kelley,” Eastwick said. “When I’m working with them in the career course, I can see how they’ve grown over the first three quarters of the program. We work on how to communicate their value and capitalize on how they’ve evolved.”
As the inaugural director of the Physician MBA Program since its launch in 2013, combined with more than 25 years of experience in higher education, Eastwick has spent her career helping graduate learners navigate learning as a solution to their goals. At the Kelley School, she can tailor that work to each physician. “Our philosophy and approach are personal because medicine is personal,” she said.
While medical school equips physicians with the knowledge they need to practice as clinicians, the Physician MBA helps doctors lead more effectively and demonstrate what they uniquely bring to the table. Through this course, Eastwick coaches physicians to think beyond a curriculum vitae (CV) and develop an effective physician executive resume. “Your resume captures the impact of your work, whereas your CV is like a card catalogue of what you’ve accomplished,” she said.
While many physicians can readily convey their medical expertise, Eastwick helps them translate their work as clinicians, managers, or medical directors into outcomes that impact an organization. This presentation helps physicians leverage their experience into new roles, such as consulting work, joining a board of directors, earning a leadership role, or transitioning into a new industry like pharmaceuticals, payers, or medical devices.
“I hold up a giant mirror to the physicians I coach to show them their impact, value, and significance to help them see how they transform the organizations they’re serving,” she said. “This encapsulates their experience into words they can use to market themselves to continue their journey and career as a physician leader.”
Through the course, Eastwick leads physicians in hands-on lessons about using LinkedIn as a networking tool to build brand awareness and working with an executive recruiter. This individualized training prepares physicians to move confidently into more leadership roles.
Eastwick invites executive recruiters and successful Physician MBA alumni to class to share their experiences so physicians can see how to navigate the executive job market. Individually, Eastwick coaches physicians in developing their executive presence in a way that gets them noticed.
“In my coaching sessions, I help physicians understand their value in a way that is authentically their own and then teach the language to leverage their brand,” she said. “We practice talking about how you contributed to a committee you served on or why specifically your patient satisfaction scores are so high. What do you do that makes you distinctive? We dig down into the layers for physicians, thinking about how they market themselves in their voice in a way that makes them feel more confident.”
In addition to career coaching in this course, physicians in the program also receive one-on-one leadership coaching from their own coach. If leadership coaching describes learning how to play well with others in the sandbox, career coaching is how you advance in sandboxes. Together, these coaching opportunities offer physicians well-rounded, personalized professional development.
Eastwick’s coaching and support for physicians in the program does not end with this course. She stays connected with them throughout the program, then remains in touch to celebrate their career wins, invite them to campus for alumni opportunities, and often continues to coach them.
“I walk alongside them for the rest of the program, and as they graduate and become alumni, I continue to be a resource and partner in your success,” Eastwick said. “Often, getting your next job is not so much about what you know as who you know. Since I’m the founding director and connected to each of the more than 400 physician who’s walked through our doors, I connect all of our physicians to alumni–not just from Physician MBA but also from the Kelley School’s massive network—to help them connect with an organization, a potential job opportunity, or a mentor to help them get where they want to go.”