ADIEM Webinar Series – How to Be a Successful EM Applicant: The Interview

Al’ai Alvarez, MD, FACEP, FAAEM

Director of Well-Being, Co-Lead, Human Potential Team, Fellowship Director, Stanford Emergency Medicine Wellness Fellowship

Stanford Emergency Medicine

Dr. Al'ai Alvarez MD, FACEP, FAAEM is a clinical assistant professor of Emergency Medicine (EM) and the Director of Well-Being at Stanford Emergency Medicine. He co-leads the Human Potential Team and serves as the Fellowship Director of the Stanford EM Physician Wellness. He co-chairs the Stanford WellMD Physician Wellness Forum. His work focuses on humanizing physician roles as individuals and teams through the harnessing of our individual human potential in the context of high-performance teams. This includes optimizing the interdependence between Process Improvement (Quality and Clinical Operations), Recruitment (Diversity), and Well-being (Inclusion).

Melanie Camejo, MD

Assistant Program Director for UMKC Residency Clerkship Director for Emergency Medicine Assistant Medical Education Fellowship Director Truman Medical Center/University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC) Emergency Medicine

I attended the 6 year BA/MD Program at UMKC. After graduation. I attended Temple in Philadelphia for my Emergency Medicine Residency Training. Kansas City has always had my heart so it was fate when my husband matched Retina in Kansas City. I am currently a nocturnist. I am also in my last semester of my Master’s in Health Professional Education at UMKC. In a little over 4 years, I have become Clerkship director, Assistant Program Director, and Assistant MedEd Fellowship Director at UMKC. This was only possible because of the amazing mentoring I have received. I continue to be heavily involved with advising students via CORD. I am passionate about mentorship, having open communication, giving meaningful feedback, flipped classroom teaching models, diversity and inclusion, and using social media for education. I have big plans for the future and I am excited to see what the future holds.

Shruti Chandra, MD, MEHP

Dr. Shruti Chandra is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University. She obtained her MD at Jefferson Medical College and completed her Emergency Medicine residency at Jefferson. She completed a Medical Education fellowship and received a Master’s in Education for Health Professions at Johns Hopkins University. Dr Chandra is the Clerkship Director for EM and involved in curriculum development for the medical school and residency.

Dr Chandra became involved in Telehealth as a Telehealth practitioner and developer of the Telehealth Facilitator Certificate Program for which she is currently the program director. She is the program director for Digital Health educational programs. She is invested in education at undergraduate, graduate and professional levels as well as research in Telehealth.

Wendy C. Coates, MD

Immediate Past President

UCLA Department of Emergency Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Wendy C. Coates, MD is Emeritus Professor of Emergency Medicine at UCLA Department of Emergency Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Senior Faculty/Education Specialist at Harbor-UCLA Department of Emergency Medicine. She served as Dean of the UCLA Acute Care College and Director of Education at Harbor-UCLA where she founded the Fellowship in Medical Education Scholarship in 1999. She enjoys continued active mentorship of her fellowship graduates. Coates graduated with honors from Allegheny College, earned her MD from Case Western Reserve University, and completed the EM residency at Allegheny General/Medical College of PA.

Dr. Coates’ research focus is medical education with an emphasis on faculty and learner development, mentorship, curricular innovation and evaluation, creativity in medicine, and qualitative methods. She is a founding member of the Editorial Board for AEM Education & Training, member of the AEM Editorial Board, and was an ABEM Item Writer for 9 years.

Dr. Coates began her service to SAEM as the Resident Representative to the Education Committee which she subsequently chaired for several years. She was the inaugural chair of the Undergraduate Education Committee where she led the creation and implementation of the SAEM Virtual Advisor Program and, most recently, led the initial Fellowship Approval Committee that developed metrics for non-ACGME approved fellowships in EM. She has also served on the Nominating Committee, Research Committee, and was the SAEM representative to the national committee on medical student education reform. She currently serves as a member-at-large on the SAEM Board of Directors. Follow on her Twitter at: @CoatesMedEd

Jeremy Collado, MD

Chief Resident Denver Health Residency in Emergency Medicine, Chair, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee Co-founder, Past President, Minority and Ally Residency Council (MARC), U of Colorado, Vice-chair Diversity and Inclusion Committee, EMRA

Born in Queens, New York, Jeremy Collado, MD, grew up in South Florida and attended Duke University where he studied Psychology, Linguistics, and Music. He received his medical degree from the University of Florida College of Medicine and is a Chief Resident at the Denver Health Residency in Emergency Medicine, where he serves as the Chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He is the co-founder and Immediate Past President of the University of Colorado Minority and Ally Residency Council (MARC) as well as a Vice-chair of EMRA’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee. His three major academic interests are: 1) diversity, inclusion, cultural responsiveness, and health disparities and equity, especially as they relate to 2) education and 3) administration and operations.

Hilary Fairbrother, MD, MPH

Lynne Holden, MD

Professor, Emergency Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Chair, Emergency Medicine Section, National Medical Association; President, Mentoring in Medicine, Inc.

Dr. Lynne Holden was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. She attended Howard University and Temple University School of Medicine. She served as a chief resident and graduated from the Jacobi-Montefiore Residency Program in 1995. In 2018, Dr. Lynne Holden became a Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (the 5th Black female in the country). Her career is dedicated to patient care, teaching, educational research and diversifying the biomedical workforce. In 2007, she co-founded Mentoring in Medicine, Inc. which is a science and health youth development nonprofit that inspires, educates and empowers low income students from elementary school through medical career to pursue a biomedical career. In July 2020, she helped co-launch the Social Emergency Medicine Program for the Jacobi-Montefiore Emergency Medicine residency. Dr. Holden was elected Chair of the Emergency Medicine Section of the National Medical Association where she oversees academic enrichment, assists with faculty promotion and leads a mentoring program for six hundred EM physicians. Additionally, she was named Chair of the K-Grad Action Group of the Roundtable on Black Men and Women at the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. Dr. Holden has been the recipient of twenty national and local awards and fifty-four press features for her work in helping to build the next generation of diverse biomedical professionals.

Amanda Irish, MD, MPH

Amanda is a second year EM resident who successfully matched at UConn. She is from a working-class city in Iowa and went to the University of Iowa for her undergraduate and graduate studies before going on to attend medical school at OHSU in Portland, OR. She is also a USMC veteran and was the first in her family to graduate from college. As a non-traditional, lower SES applicant, with mediocre board scores and grades, she faced an uphill battle herself during application season. She enjoys working with students who face struggles leading up to their match.

Suzette Ikejiani

Aaron Kuzel, D.O., MBA

Emergency Medicine Resident, PGY-II University of Louisville School of Medicine

Aaron R. Kuzel, D.O., MBA is an Emergency Medicine Resident at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and is currently serving as a Member-at-Large on the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine’s (SAEM) Resident and Medical Student’s (RAMS) Board. Dr. Kuzel is a former Forensic Scientist for the United States Department of Justice and currently works on projects related to medical education, rural emergency medicine, health policy, ems, tactical emergency medicine, and forensics. Dr. Kuzel is a graduate of the DO/MBA program at Lincoln Memorial University College of Osteopathic Medicine where he received induction into Sigma Sigma Phi (SSP), the Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS), and Omega Beta Iota (OBI) the Osteopathic Health Policy Honor Society. Dr. Kuzel is also a recipient of the commission of Kentucky Colonel and a member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels.

Thomas Morrissey, MD

Tom Morrissey is a PGY-21 resident at UFHealth-Jacksonville. He fell into EM quite by accident while pursuing an MD/PhD (U. Miami) focusing on the role of Schwann cells in supporting spinal cord regeneration. By chance, one day early in his 4th year, he got lost and took a shortcut through the ED. Never looked back. Residency in Jax led to faculty position, Clerkship director, APD, yadayada. It gets in your blood y’know…what’cha gonna do?

His big interests include helping students prepare for the transition to residency, find the best-fit training program, and helping new interns get their clinical sea legs.

Notable achievements include holding 67 admitted patients at the same time one day, not following the eSLOE rules very well, drinking more coffee than most of the rest of the department combined, and having the gumption to try to teach a Weimaraner to surf a stand up paddleboard. He hopes to someday get rich sponsoring a line of Hawaiian print scrubs…but he’s not holding his breath.

Sreeja M. Natesan, MD

Duke University, Durham NC

I am an associate professor and associate program director at the Duke University Emergency Medicine Program, as well as the Duke EM Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion co-founder/co-chair. My primary area of interest and expertise is in diversity & inclusion, clinical teaching, and feedback. I am enthusiastic, with a passion for collaboration growing talent, and helping to contribute through my project management, organizational, and communication skills. I have served on several national committees for education & diversity including helping with the Educational Summit for SAEM, helping to create a DEI mini-track for CORD last year, being a speaker for the DEI webinar series for ADIEM in 2020, and serving as co-founder and facilitator for CORD DEI Stronger Together bookclub, among other contributions. I possess a broad clinical and research training experience centering around project management, collaboration, and educational skills training. Briefly, this includes Duke Teach Equity Now, Duke Moments to Movement Foundation Course, ACEP Teaching Fellowship, ALiEM Faculty Incubator Program (where I now serve as chief operation officer), AAMC Medical Education Research Certificate program, Duke Educational Skills Longitudinal Mentorship Program, and Duke Academy for Health Professions Education and Academic Development (AHEAD) Med Ed Certificate Program, among other development.

I would be honored to work with others to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion for our medical education community through education and research. I believe together collectively, we have the power to have a greater impact and am excited to be involved further to give back to our community. I desire to help disseminate knowledge by curating and providing resources to our community surrounding Diversity in Medical education, best practices/promising practices surrounding faculty/resident recruitment with the use of holistic review, and mitigating bias in the education/feedback we provide. I helped lead our CORD Best Practice team to focus on 3 papers regarding DEI in med ed (Holistic Review & Mitigating Bias; Physician Pipeline and Pathway Program; both under review by WestJem; Faculty Recruitment and Representation - accepted for publication). I believe through ADIEM we could do similar work to help serve our community.

I have been able to do some work surrounding this here at Duke by teaching holistic review to our program directors at our institutional GME meetings. I would love to have regular offerings to our community in the form of skills training and workshops to practice tools that can then be shared at the participant’s local institutions. By doing so, we can have a larger impact on our work and reach. I look forward to the opportunity to be involved, create networks and relationships, and to serve our ED community.

Ava Pierce, MD

Member-at-Large

UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas

Ava E. Pierce, MD is a Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, the Associate Vice Chair of Outreach and Engagement for the Department of Emergency Medicine, the Director of the Emergency Medicine Research Associate Program, a Co-Director of the Joint Admission Medical Program (JAMP) at UT Southwestern and works clinically at Parkland Health and Hospital Systems. She obtained her medical degree from Louisiana State University School of Medicine at Shreveport and completed an emergency medicine residency at Emory University School of Medicine.
Dr. Pierce completed the Medical Education Research Certificate (MERC) Program and the AAMC Healthcare Executive Diversity and Inclusion Certificate Program and is committed to making innovative changes that will improve excellence in health care, thus strengthening a workforce that will provide quality medical care to all. She serves as a member of UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Medical School Admissions Committee and is a faculty liaison for Housestaff Emerging Academy of Leaders (HEAL), which focuses on professional development and mentoring for residents and fellows. Her research interests include medical education, health equity, and cardiac resuscitation.
Dr. Pierce has built a steadfast academic career with involvement in numerous capacities at SAEM. She has been actively involved in the Academy for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Medicine (ADIEM) since it was founded. She has served as the Development Officer for the Academy for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Medicine (ADIEM), President - Elect for ADIEM for 2017-2018, ADIEM’s President 2018 – 2019 and ADIEM’s Immediate Past President 2019 - 2020. She was awarded the 2016 Outstanding Academician Award by ADIEM in recognition of her impact on the academic success of students and residents underrepresented in medicine. She has also been a member of SAEM’s Membership Committee, SAEM’s Ethics Committee and SAEM’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force. She is an elected 2020-2023 and 2023 - 2026 Member-at-Large of the Board of Directors of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). She is also a member of the National Medical Association, the AAMC Group on Diversity and Inclusion, and a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians. In 2022, she was appointed as holder of the Michael P. Wainscott, M.D. Professorship in Emergency Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Dustin Blake Williams, MD

UT Southwestern Medical Center

I received my undergraduate degree in biomedical science from Texas A&M University. I then obtained my medical degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center-San Antonio before continuing on to complete my emergency medicine residency at Indiana University. I continued into a career in academics as faculty at UT-Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW) where I currently serve as residency program director. My primary clinical site is Parkland Memorial Hospital, the sole county hospital for the entirety of Dallas county as well as one of the largest and busiest county hospitals in the country.

I bring a strong work ethic and proven leadership with many years of experience working in a large GME setting. During my time at UTSW I have served in various leadership roles including assistant program director and more recently PD, chair and co-chair of departmental and interdisciplinary committees. I have also had long-standing membership and involvement in both SAEM and CORD, having served on multiple committees including: CORD AA21 DEI mini-track co-chair, SAEM Education Committee and most recently the SAEM Faculty Development Committee. I also currently serve as co-chair of our ADIEM LGBTQIA+ Subcommittee.

I strongly value the fantastic mentorship and leadership development that I have gained through my involvement in SAEM and ADIEM over the past 7 years. I wish to continue my service to this organization by appointment as Member-at-large to the ADIEM Board. I look forward to positively impacting our organization through continued advocacy for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. I intend to serve as a dedicated member of the team, to be present and engaged, working to seek out diverse opportunities for collaboration, and brainstorming innovative strategies for lasting change in our organization.