From Monday through Friday, Wes Harden is the director of imaging services for the 580-bed Lexington Medical Center in West Columbia, South Carolina. On the weekends, however, Harden makes the lengthy commute to his Florida home, not only to visit his family, but to tend his pineapple crop.
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For the past 30 years, Wendy Renneke of Woodinville, Washington, has worked for the University of Washington Medical Center. Her imaging expertise led her from roles as a radiologic technologist into imaging supervisory positions and, finally, to her current job as practice manager for an outpatient primary care clinic in the UW Medicine health system.
When she arrived in the United States in 2001, Elena Danilova began seeking to continue the medical career she had begun in her native Russia. There, Danilova had worked as a physician’s assistant, but the professional burnout she experienced left her interested in a career in MRI. In 2004, Danilova arrived in California, and enrolled at Sonoma College with the intention of becoming an MRI technologist.
About 20 years ago, Dennis Chaltraw remembers leaving an insurance industry leadership conference with an important takeaway from the featured speaker. He doesn’t recollect the specific phrasing, but the takeaway was, “Regardless of how hard you work, make sure you bring balance into your life, and find a way to live outside of work.”
Back when she was a college student growing up in New Jersey, Mariah Garcia was on a pre-law track, at the insistence of her parents. But by her own admission, “school wasn’t going that great, and I didn’t really enjoy it.”
“One of the most important things when I teach anatomy is teaching students about variation and evolution,” Schachner said. “When I talk about the spine, I always talk about how the discs in between the vertebrae originally evolved to be under tension instead of compression. I describe how the serratus anterior, which straps your shoulder to your body, shifts the arm position in a biped relative to how it would be in a quadruped, and how the function changes. It puts the limb in a different perspective.”
For Kitt Shaffer, MD, Ph.D., FACR, art has always been a major part of her life. Growing up in a family that supported and enabled her creative endeavors, Shaffer was making jewelry in junior high, and netting awards for her realistic paintings and figure drawing by high school. But in medical school, when all her time was occupied by the work of completing her professional education, those creative efforts largely went by the wayside.
Bradley Spieler is a native New Orleanian through and through. With a group he christened “Saints Fans Being Saints,” Spieler partnered with staff at Louisiana State University Medical Center Spirit of Charity Foundation to donate money and gifts-in-kind to patients being cared for at the Level I trauma center.
Growing up in Granite City, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Eric Hooper enjoyed a childhood full of outdoor activities. From waterskiing to bow hunting to riding minibikes, Hooper developed a taste for action mixed in with the excitement of exploring wild places.
By Matt Skoufalos Growing up on a small farm near Greenfield, Iowa, John Mayes remembers driving tractors and doing field work…
