IDSA Leadership Institute Leadership Bolus

The IDSA Leadership Institute is pleased to introduce the 2025 Rising Leaders program participants. Please join us in congratulating each member of the new class on their commitment to leadership development and community building in the field of ID/HIV! 

We’re excited to welcome Sapna Morris, MD, MBA, FIDSA, and Subhadra Mandadi, MD, MSHS, to the IDSA Leadership Institute Alumni Advisory Panel, a group of dedicated alumni focused on strengthening our community and enhancing the Leadership Institute experience. Other current panel members are listed below. 

• Samir Gupta, MD
• Tricia Bravo, MD, FIDSA
• Aniruddha Hazra, MD, FIDSA
• Nikolaus Jilg, MD, PhD, FIDSA
• Shweta Anjan, MD, FIDSA
• Serin Edwin Erayil, MD 

The goals of the panel include building networking opportunities to connect alumni and foster collaboration within the IDSA community, organizing key events like the annual IDWeek Leadership Institute Alumni Reception and planning virtual events that offer ongoing education and professional development. We’re also eager to hear ideas and suggestions from the alumni community to make the panel even more impactful. 

Dr. Hartzell is a member of the faculty for the IDSA Leadership Institute. He is a board-certified internist and infectious diseases physician. He served 25 years in the United States Army, including a deployment to Afghanistan as a battalion surgeon with the 82nd Airborne Division, before retiring in 2023. He has held multiple academic roles including assistant dean for faculty development at the Uniformed Services University and program director for the National Capital Consortium Internal Medicine Residency. He completed a Master of Science in Health Professions Education at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, where he continues to teach leadership development. Dr. Hartzell’s current academic interests include leader and faculty development to empower leaders to create positive change in their spheres of influence at work, home and communities.   

“Every single one of us, whether chief of service, medical student or EMS crew member rushing a patient through the doors, can help spark that shift. With small, intentional acts of positivity, we can create a better workplace, one moment at a time.” — Paula Ferrada, MD 

I loved this quote by Paula Ferrada, MD, who is chair of surgery at Inova Healthcare System in Virginia. In a recent article, she challenges us to think about how our actions lift up those around us and how every interaction is a chance to build the culture that we want and deserve in health care. I would ask each of you to think about one daily action you can take to better support those you lead and work with.  

Here are some recommendations (paraphrased) suggested by Dr. Ferrada in her article: 

• Frequently give people a sincere thank you. Be specific about the behavior or impact you are thanking them for. This makes it more meaningful because the specificity matters.
• Break down silos to step in and help others as needed.
• Be present in every interaction – that means putting down your phone at work and home!
• Model vulnerability so others can be human without fear.
• When bad things happen, show up and support your team.
  • If your colleague has had a bad patient outcome or something is going on in their personal life, check in on them. 

Too late for 2026 resolutions … never too late to make progress  

I saw this short article around the new year. The author is a practicing emergency medicine physician. The tips were practical and addressed many challenges we face. Your challenge: Pick one and get after it. My top three from the article: 

• Develop a recovery ritual for a tough day or shift.
  • I am still working on my ritual, but exercising or just taking a short walk helps me a lot.
• Invest in personal/professional growth through coaching.
  • I have received coaching in the last year and became a certified coach. I did not know what I was missing with coaching. Coaches are amazing thought partners and a forcing function for us to stop, reflect and plan. It is well worth it to set aside the time and invest in yourself.
• Make micro-doses of exercise a habit.
  • I love this idea. Take the stairs. Do a set of air squats or 20 push-ups in the office. I have a Peloton, and even a 10-minute HIIT ride makes me feel better about myself.
• Set a personal goal outside of medicine.
  • My personal goal is to take a large overseas vacation this summer! 

“Rest is a four-letter word in medicine.” 

—  Andrea Austin, MD, Revitalized: A Guidebook to Following Your Healing Heartline 

Listen to this podcast with Brad Stulberg where he talks about reaching peak performance. One key part he highlights is this equation: 

Stress + Rest = Growth 

We have to take time to rest to grow. This means we need to take days off, and we need to sleep. 

Make sleep a priority 

If you are cheating on sleep, you are cheating yourself. 

Let that sink in a little bit. We think that we can push through and that we are somehow tough because we don’t sleep. The evidence is clear. The more consistent your sleep is, the better your health and performance will be. This is consistently backed up by data so practice evidence-based leadership and get your sleep. 

Lead well, my friends! 

Josh 

Julie Trivedi, MD, CPCC, FIDSA, is a board-certified infectious diseases physician, mom of two girls and a certified professional Co-Active Coach. She is actively involved with the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and is currently serving as an elected councilor on the Board. She has completed the Co-Active Training Institute Leadership Experience, was part of the IDSA Leadership Institute Community of Leaders program in 2022 and serves as the lead coach for the Rising Leaders Program. She actively coaches women and physicians in medicine away from burnout and overwhelm and toward fulfillment and joy. Dr. Trivedi’s interests include faculty and leader development through mentorship and professional coaching.

Happy New Year, leaders! 

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” — Tony Robbins 

We all implemented this phrase in our journeys toward becoming physicians — the intense focus on academics, monitoring our grades, and ensuring we continually improved and worked our way toward being the best we could be. We received accolades and awards, completed certificates and certifications, participated in committees, earned grants and promotions — all as important milestones on the climb to Everest.  

If we didn’t have our annual evaluations, a promotions process, mentors or other external accountability groups, how often would we check in with ourselves? 

I’d like to share two tools that I have found incredibly useful.  

1. The Wheel of Life:
   
   Many of you who have experienced coaching may have participated in the Wheel of Life self-reflection tool. It’s included here in this newsletter for those of you who are interested. The beautiful part of the Wheel of Life is that you can choose the domains that are relevant for you as well as assess yourself according to what your own ideal is. Once I assess myself on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being my ideal) for each of the categories, I look at the areas in which I rated higher satisfaction and identify a few strategies that helped me to be successful. I then took those strategies and applied them to one or two categories with the lowest scores to see what I could do to intentionally improve those areas. 
   
   
2. YearCompass: 
   
   Every year, I have been taking time to close out the current year and be intentional about the new year. I use YearCompass  – an in-depth reflection tool to see what you’ve learned about yourself from the past year and what you want to commit to in the next year. In this exercise, we are encouraged to celebrate what went well and what we accomplished, and then explore what we would like the next year to represent for us.  

While establishing a goal is important, it is who we become in pursuit of the goal that is the most crucial component of the learning journey.   

My top learnings from 2025: 

1. My identity is not defined by my job, my title, my role, my salary, my position or any other accomplishment. Ask yourself, “Who am I?”
   
   
2. I determine my value. When my identity is no longer defined by external measures, then my identity becomes nonnegotiable. My value and my sense of worth are not determined by how much I do or how much I am paid to do what I do. When I embody my own values, I reclaim my power. Ask yourself, “What value do I bring no matter where I am or what I am doing?”
   
   
3. It’s important to recognize how I have been utilizing my energy. In the last IDSA Leadership Institute Alumni Leadership Bolus, I posted about a reflection exercise to help determine what commitments and responsibilities (personal and professional) feel aligned and what no longer feels aligned. I made courageous decisions to leave my place of employment, effective Feb. 20, 2026, and personal relationships. I noticed that I was no longer leaking my energy but actually able to hold it and feel it expand within me. Ask yourself, “What do I want to say ‘No’ to in my life?”
   
   
4. It’s also helpful to release old stories and my survival identity. I have spent months reflecting on my life experiences and the meaning I gave to those experiences. Most of those stories were focusing on feelings of being “not enough” or sometimes “too much,” when in fact I have always been perfect the way I am. My survival identity depended upon me believing that I needed to show up a particular way in order to be accepted, to be seen, to be valued, to be heard and to be loved – when in fact, once I honored and accepted myself as I was, without judgment and instead with compassion, that survival identity released itself. I was able to come home to myself. Ask yourself, “What parts of myself are longing to be expressed authentically?” 

The end result: I am celebrating each and every aspect of myself. I am so eternally grateful for all of the hardships, challenges, breakups and breakdowns I have experienced because all of those have actually helped me come home to myself.  

I am embarking on a new path. I am leaving my academic ID position Feb. 20. I have chosen to do this because I want to spend the next few months with full autonomy over my time and energy. More specifically, I want to spend more time with my daughters, especially as my oldest is graduating from high school in May of 2026. I acknowledge that we can only live one day at a time, one moment at a time, and it is up to us in those moments to choose what feels most aligned with us so we can look back with no regrets.  

2026 is a year of possibilities. According to the Chinese zodiac, it is the year of the fire horse. The year of momentum and action. Release what is no longer serving you for it is only holding you back from who you truly are and the life you are meant to live. And that, my friend, is someone who is bright, beautiful, intelligent, strong and capable. Hope you enjoyed this letter from my heart to yours.  

You can always reach me at julietrivedi@gmail.com.