Dr. Uché Blackstock spent almost a decade as an associate professor at NYU School of Medicine. From the outside she looked happy and successful — inside, she had never felt so invisible, undervalued, and underappreciated.
So she left. When she wrote her resignation op-ed on why Black faculty leave academic medicine, she was sobbing — grieving the career she wished she could have had. That piece became lightning in a bottle, followed by her instant New York Times bestselling book, Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine.
In this Inspiring Women conversation, host Laurie McGraw sits down with the founder of Advancing Health Equity to talk about the moment the window on health equity swung wide open in 2020 — and what happens now that it's closing. They get honest about the difference between performative statements and real systemic change, why the work is being renamed and re-embedded rather than erased, and why some disparities — like maternal health — are still getting worse.
She breaks down the strategic shift her own organization had to make when the inbound stopped overnight: from trainings to restructuring, from the moral case to the ROI case, from many projects to a few high-value partnerships. And she goes somewhere most leadership conversations don't — burnout, hiring a mindset coach, and picking up the violin again for the first time since she was 18.
Hosted by Laurie McGraw.
IN THIS EPISODE:
- Why she left academic medicine — "I never felt so invisible"
- The op-ed that changed everything — and the messages still arriving 6 years later
- Performative statements vs. real systemic change after 2020
- Why the work is being renamed, not erased — and why she kept her org's name
- The leaky pipeline myth — it's a systemic problem, not a pipeline problem
- Finding the open windows before they close
- The business case for health equity: ROI, clinical trial diversity, the bottom line
- Rebuilding her organization when inbound stopped overnight
- Leading through burnout — fewer, higher-value partnerships
- Protecting your wellbeing as a purpose-driven founder
Full episode on Inspiring Women. Link in comments.
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