Diamond-195x300As a newer program director, I was honored to be nominated for the Secretary/Treasurer position on the MPPDA Executive Committee. I am hoping to be a voice for smaller Med-Peds residency programs, bring my organizational skills to keep meetings on track and use my interpersonal skills to help develop relationships within MPPDA, particularly to help connect other new program directors to this supportive community. I have been able to attend the previous two years’ MPPDA meetings and find that I learn a great deal from everyone else’s experiences and how they lead their programs. I have used some of those ideas to implement changes to our directed reading program, establish a Med-Peds interest group here at Maine Medical Center, and am beginning to collaborate with other program directors in my region to reach out to medical schools that do not have Med-Peds training programs. I continue to work on my own innovations as well and have been able to implement a residency-wide quality improvement project related to high frequency utilizers from the resident clinic population and redesigned direct observation evaluation for residents. I continue to seek opportunities for professional development and after attending the pre-course for AAIM on Women in Leadership this past year I am excited for the potential opportunity to be on the MPPDA Executive Committee and share with others some of the skills I am building. As a member of the committee I think I would be a good listener for the goals of the greater MPPDA community and am a good communicator which will allow me to share my own and others ideas in an effective manner. Most importantly, I look forward to building relationships within MPPDA, something I have found so valuable myself.