Mar 5, 2019 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion
More than 200 people enjoyed an evening of pageantry at The Mount Sinai Charity Drag Race, an event inspired by the reality television competition RuPaul’s Drag Race, in Goldwrum Auditorium on Thursday, January 31. Organized by two Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai groups that are dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ participation in the sciences, oSTEM (Out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) at Mount Sinai and the Stonewall Alliance, the event raised more than $2,700 for the Ali Forney Center—a Harlem-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting homeless LGBTQ youth.
Hosted by New York City-based celebrity drag star Lagoona Bloo, the event featured four Icahn School of Medicine students who entertained the crowd with rousing lip synchs, as well as a talent portion that included a martial arts demonstration using nunchuks, and a stand-up comedy routine. Contestants were judged by Mount Sinai’s Ann-Gel Palermo, DrPH, MPH, Associate Dean for Diversity in Biomedicine, and Jerry Chipuk PhD, Associate Professor, Oncological Sciences and Dermatology, along with Tyler Neasloney, Special Events and Communications Manager at the Ali Forney Center.
“The idea started as a joke, an over the top event idea that we definitely did not have the means to pull off,” says organizer Christopher Panebianco, PhD candidate in Biomedical Sciences, at the Icahn School of Medicine. “Over the course of several months, this pipe dream snowballed into something fantastic, drawing diverse members of the broader Mount Sinai community together for a worthy cause.”
Lagoona Bloo, back row center, surrounded by contestants and organizers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in alphabetical order: Eziwoma Alibo, Benjamin Ben-Zvi, Phil Cohen, Tristan Fehr, Akio Kozato, Tyler Martinson, Don Nguyen, Christopher Panebianco, M.Q. Perkins, and Zebulon Vance.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion, Featured, MSBI
The Mount Sinai Health System recently welcomed a diverse group of new employees at its New Beginnings Orientation held at the Corporate Services Center in midtown Manhattan.
Forbes has ranked the Mount Sinai Health System No. 1 nationally among health systems and hospitals, and No. 19 overall, on its 2019 list of “The Best Employers for Diversity.” The rankings included 500 U.S. organizations in major industries such as biotechnology, insurance, telecommunications, retail, and education.
To compile its second annual diversity list, Forbes partnered with the market research firm Statista to survey 50,000 U.S. employees who work for companies that employ at least 1,000 people nationally. Those surveyed were asked about diversity within their own workplaces and were also given the chance to evaluate employers in their respective industries. Additional criteria that factored into the rankings included diversity among top executives and the board, and leadership that proactively communicated the importance of diversity and inclusion and promoted it throughout their organizations.
“We are thrilled to receive this recognition,” says Gary C. Butts, MD, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the Mount Sinai Health System, and Dean for Diversity Programs, Policy and Community Affairs for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Diversity and inclusion are integral to Mount Sinai’s mission. We are committed to embracing and advancing diversity in our faculty, staff, students, and trainees, and providing our diverse patient population with high-quality care.”
Says Pamela Y. Abner, MPA, CPXP, Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, Office for Diversity and Inclusion, Mount Sinai Health System, “We strive to create an inclusive and equitable environment where, through the lens of cultural awareness, we engage staff in key diversity and inclusion initiatives to enhance the patient experience.”
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Sep 11, 2018 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion, Featured
From left: moderator David Epstein, Director, Domestic Human Resources, Doctors Without Borders; with Mount Sinai’s Pamela Y. Abner, MPA, Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer, Office for Diversity and Inclusion; and Barbara Warren, PsyD, Director, LGBT Programs and Policies, who was a panelist at the event.
The Mount Sinai Health System recently hosted the National Diversity Council’s inaugural Tri-State Health Care Diversity Summit at the Corporate Services Center, which brought together nearly 100 health care administrators and diversity and inclusion professionals from across the region. The Council, a nonprofit organization that advances inclusiveness in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, presented the Health System with a Health Care Diversity Excellence Award, recognizing Mount Sinai’s deep commitment to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and surrounding communities.
“This event provided a valuable forum for sharing and learning,” says Mary Koshy, MPA, Associate Director, Office for Diversity and Inclusion, Mount Sinai Health System. “The Council received such positive feedback that we were asked to host the event again next year.”
Showing respect and understanding for people of all backgrounds improves patient satisfaction—benefiting both patients’ well-being and a medical institution’s bottom line, panelists said. The keynote speaker, Mecca Santana, Senior Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement, Westchester Medical Center Health Network, said it was also important to consider diversity in mentoring, retention, and promotion of staff. “Diversity is being invited to the party,” she said. “Inclusion is being asked to dance.”
Sep 11, 2018 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion, Featured
Students in the Nanotechnology course, from left: Ava Cardillo, Diven Duran, Daniel Musheev, and Kai Kumeno.
Parissa Tabrizian, MD, Professor of Surgery, center, gave a tour of operating rooms at The Mount Sinai Hospital to participants in “Saturday at Sinai.”
More than 120 high school, college, and graduate students aspiring to a broad range of careers in health participated this summer in internships and talent pipeline programs throughout the Mount Sinai Health System. Two units of the Office for Diversity and Inclusion (ODI)—Corporate Health System Affairs and the Center for Excellence in Youth Education (CEYE)—supported initiatives to provide opportunities in medicine, science, health administration, real estate, and technology to students from underrepresented backgrounds.
“The experience that I’ve had at Mount Sinai has helped me target what type of biomedical engineer I want to become in the future,” says Awa Bagayoko, who participated in CEYE’s Nanotechnology course. “The program also reaffirmed my interest in medicine.”
Israa Maarouf was an Information Technology intern.
This year marked the be.inning of a formal partnership between Mount Sinai and the New York City Department of Education (DOE) to off er internships to high school students in the departments led by Kumar Chatani, MBA, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Mount Sinai Health System; and Kenneth Holden, Senior Vice President, Real Estate Services & Facilities. “Twenty-six interns gained hands-on experiences in information technology; planning, design, and construction; engineering; and property management,” says Shana Dacon, MPH, MBA, Assistant Director, Office for Diversity and Inclusion. “We will continue to work with the DOE to expand opportunities for students during the academic year.”
Fourteen more students—from high school to graduate school—had internships in clinical departments, patient experience, population health, and diversity management, supported by ODI in partnership with organizations including America Needs You; the All Stars Project, Inc.; the Greater New York Hospital Association; the Institute for Diversity and Health Equity; and Prep for Prep.
This year, ODI also launched Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Young Queer Urban Teens for Health (LGBT YQUTH) in Medicine—a talent pipeline program for careers in health care. In the program, ODI staff and members of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s Stonewall Alliance student group gave informational talks to LGBT youth organizations throughout the city. “In June, we welcomed participants from the talks to the pilot ‘Saturday at Sinai’ event,” says Richard Cancio, MPH, Program Manager for LGBT Health Services, Mount Sinai Health System. The free event included interactive activities; a tour of The Mount Sinai Hospital; and a panel of public health researchers, nursing and medical students, and graduate school alumni.
CEYE student Awa Bagayoko toured Sinai BioDesign.
CEYE’s six-week summer internship programs attracted 73 high school students from across New York City. Students participated in the Fruit Fly Genomics or Nanotechnology research courses; the Clinical Internship program; or the Lloyd Sherman Scholars program, a two-year biomedical research program for young men of color.
CEYE’s research courses met daily, with students receiving lecture-based instruction coupled with activities in the Icahn School of Medicine’s teaching laboratories, where projects included studying the behavior of fruit flies kept in isolation, and exploring silver nanoparticles and their medical implications. Clinical Internship participants were matched with faculty and staff and shadowed them in jobs throughout The Mount Sinai Hospital. In the Lloyd Sherman Scholars program, first-year participants took a Biotechnology course, and second-year scholars were placed in mentored research labs. In another two-year program, 14 interns who worked in labs during the school year returned in the summer to continue their work, assisting in areas of study including ovarian cancer survival rates and engineered cardiac tissue. All of the research interns plan to submit their summer work to the upcoming New York City Science and Engineering Fair.
“My internship showed me how hands-on science is,” says Brandon Soto, a first-year Sherman Scholar. “It also showed me that there are a lot of problems in the world that can be solved with science.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion, Featured, MSBI
The first cohort of the Mount Sinai Health System’s Administrative Fellows Program: from left: Christina Cellante, MHA; Elizabeth Alago, MPH; Michelle Kang, MHA; and Jean-Luc Coletta, MHA.
With broad support from system leadership, the Office for Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) launched a postgraduate program to build a pipeline to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in health care administration. ODI recruited fellows from a competitive pool of applicants who were recent recipients of master’s degrees, assigning two fellows each to Mount Sinai Beth Israel and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s. In June, ODI hosted a celebration as the first cohort of Administrative Fellows completed their rewarding experience.
“We initiated this leadership development program specifically to address advancing leadership diversity as one of our primary goals of the Mount Sinai Health System,” said Pamela Y. Abner, MPA, Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of the Office for Diversity and Inclusion, at the graduation ceremony held in June at Mount Sinai’s Corporate Services Center.
The four administrative fellows served rotations that varied in length from several weeks to several months, learning from senior leadership preceptors and taking on projects such as setting up a gym for employees, training staff on the EPIC records system, and coordinating the relocation of clinics. “We were able to work on projects from day one, and see them grow into reality,” said Michelle Kang, MHA, who was a fellow at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s.
Arthur A. Gianelli, MPH, President, Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, referred to the fellows as “dynamic” and said the program sent an important message. “When you have diversity in the leadership ranks—in gender, or in background, or in ethnicities and cultures—it really does make the organization better at taking care of the diverse patients we see each and every day.”
The fellows— Elizabeth Alago, MPH; Christina Cellante, MHA; and Jean-Luc Coletta, MHA; and Michelle Kang, MHA— have moved into managerial and coordinator positions across the System. Two fellows are currently in their second year of the program while six new fellows joined the health system in July. The program in 2019 will expand to two corporate services departments–Information Technology and Real Estate Services and Facilities.
At the celebration, Christopher Berner, Vice President, Human Resources, Mount Sinai Beth Israel, congratulated the fellows and thanked the many managers present for “really embracing the fellows from the start.”
Mr. Berner told the fellows, “A mark of your success is that yesterday in the emergency room, two doctors came to me and said, ‘We would really like an administrative fellow. When can we get an administrative fellow?’ Two years ago they wouldn’t have said that.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Diversity and Inclusion
The Mount Sinai contingent at the New York City Pride Parade in Manhattan.
The Mount Sinai Health System recently took part in two festive Pride Month events. In the Queens Pride Parade, held on Sunday, June 3, in Jackson Heights, dozens of employees walked behind a Mount Sinai banner wearing T-shirts that read, “We Take Pride in Your Health.”
A group of 75 employees were among the 40,000 marchers in the 49th annual New York City Pride Parade on Sunday, June 24, in Manhattan. During the march, the Health System also participated in the 25th annual PrideFest street fair in Greenwich Village. Staff of Mount Sinai’s LGBT Health Services, Office for Diversity and Inclusion, and Institute for Advanced Medicine distributed free condoms, pamphlets, and Mount Sinai favors.
From left: Carla Moscoso, Director, Practice Operations, Mount Sinai Queens; Diana Rosario, Population Health Care Coordinator; and Richard Cancio, MPH, Program Manager for LGBT Health Services, Mount Sinai Health System, at the Queens Pride Parade.
