Encouraged by the mentorship they received during their training, two recent Kellogg graduates have gone on to faculty positions at other top institutions. Their accomplishments remind us to never lose sight of the importance of having—and being—great mentors.
Kristen Harris Nwanyanwu, MD, MBA, (Residency, 2013), a retinal specialist, is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the Yale School of Medicine.
“I’m so grateful for the mentors I had at Kellogg,” she recounts, “especially Dr. Tom Gardner. We share a passion for stopping preventable diabetes-related blindness.” Dr. Gardner continues to mentor Dr. Nwanyanwu through the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation Junior Faculty Scholar Program. Dr. Nwanyanwu is equally committed to paying it forward, supporting the aspirations of the students and residents on her research team.
Andrew Stacey, MD, MS (Residency, 2015) is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Washington and a faculty member at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, where he has developed an ocular oncology program— the first ever in the WWAMI region (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho).
“I am where I am because of my mentors at Kellogg,” he says. Specifically, he points to the support of residency director Shahzad Mian, MD, and Hakan Demirci, MD, director of the U-M Ocular Oncology Clinic. Following the lead of his Kellogg mentors, Dr. Stacey now actively mentors residents and fellows in the clinic, the operating room and the lab.