Lloyd Minor, MD, the former provost of Johns Hopkins University, officially became dean of the Stanford School of Medicine on December 1.
A few days before he assumed his post, I sat down with him for a 1:2:1 podcast. We had a wide-ranging conversation, beginning with his childhood in Arkansas. We talked about his parents – his mother was a kindergarten teacher whose most famous student was Chelsea Clinton, and his father worked for the Internal Revenue System, helping Minor prepare his taxes every year until he passed away. And he described how his world-view changed when he discovered the stark inequities between black and white schools as a young teen bussed to a former all-black junior high school in Little Rock.
We talked about Minor’s values and why he believes collaboration, not hierarchical top management, is the key to success for any leader. When I asked him whether this was the best of times or the worst of times for health care, he replied, "Both.” He believes academic medical institutions can play a significant leadership role in the reshaping of medicine, and he sees Stanford as a place that is uniquely qualified to be at the forefront of that change.
Minor is a physician-scientist whose ground-breaking work on a debilitating inner ear disorder was featured on the popular prime time medical drama "Grey's Anatomy," which we talked about, too.
And why did Minor choose to come west to Stanford and leave Baltimore after 19 years at Hopkins? You'll hear him discuss that in the podcast.
Previously: An introduction to Lloyd Minor, Stanford medical school’s new dean and Lloyd Minor named dean of Stanford’s School of Medicine
