Скачать или смотреть Authentic Identity: Normalizing Diversity and Driving Policy Change in Healthcare Leadership

Kyle Wilby on using authentic LGBTQ+ healthcare leadership identity as a catalyst for policy change, community advocacy, and career growth.

For years, Kyle felt compelled to conceal his identity while growing up in a conservative province and living in the Middle East, spending significant effort to hide this part of himself.

Even after choosing to live an open life in New Zealand, his professional environment fixated on the label ("the gay professor"), frustrating his desire to be valued primarily for professional work and achievements.

Kyle, Professor and Director of the College of Pharmacy, Dalhousie University, stresses that the urgency for health systems is to move past merely tolerating diversity and recognize the profound value of lived experience.

The pathway to leveraging identity for leadership impact involves:

• Commit to Radical Authenticity: Intentionally shift the mindset from hiding an identity to making it "my thing", which fuels up-skilling, community engagement, and emergence as a thought leader in areas like LGBTQ+ health and education.

• Leverage Identity for Systemic Change: Use the authentic self to drive tangible outcomes, including securing funding, advocating for community needs, and leading curriculum development for underrepresented populations.

• Normalize Diversity in Leadership: Achieving visible representation (such as being the first openly LGBTQ+ leader of a pharmacy school in Canada) inspires others who feel labeled as "different," "wrong," or "illegal" to see that their identity can catalyze their journey in leadership.

This narrative powerfully reimagines health care leadership by demonstrating that professional success is accelerated, not hindered, by embracing one's authentic identity. Diverse backgrounds and perspectives are crucial for creating positive and meaningful institutional change.