Nancy Oriol

What inspires or motivates you in your role at HMS/HSDM?
The students Collectively our students bring an amazing spectrum of lives and experiences. Individually they bring brilliance and energy. They are the promise for the future of the profession. Being a witness to their progress on their way to that future, inspires me.

What is the significance of the object you brought with you to the photo shoot?
In 1992, along with former HMS student Cheryl Dorsey '92, I co-founded The Family Van, a mobile clinic. As an anesthesiologist who chose to build a program designed to deliver education and prevention services to the streets of Boston, I often felt out of place. Anesthesiology is primarily a hospital-based specialty. What was I doing in Dudley Square talking to patients? One of my treasured mentors and an advisor to the Family Van was Dr. Julius Richmond. The photo within my photo shows an historic moment in the Rose Garden at the signing ceremony that marked the launching of the Head Start program. Pictured with President and Mrs. Johnson is Dr. Richmond, who became Surgeon General and Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services from 1977 to 1981. 

Dr. Richmond's support for the Family Van made it all make sense. He was a physician who became Surgeon General of the United States and one of the accomplishments of which he was most proud was to ensure the educational beginning of all children through the Head Start program, which is not something he would have learned in medical school either. He served as a model for reaching beyond one's medical training by identifying a need and creating a program from the ground up to fill it.
Now, 22 years later, the Family Van is still going strong.