Postbac Alumnus Spotlight

Ken Schaefle ’09 PBPM Found A Different Audience

By Eric Butterman

He co-founded a successful improv group—then traded the entertainment world for a stethoscope. Some say modern improv comedy started out in the Chicago area. Well, so did Dr. Ken Schaefle ’09, who came of age in the Windy City when Mike Myers, Tina Fey, and Chris Farley were making the town laugh. Though Schaefle was more interested in playing bass guitar in his formative years than doing comedy, it was his facility with audio and visual technology that partly made him a fit as a co-founder of Boom Chicago, a comedy theatre in Amsterdam. Teaming up with Andrew Moskos and Jonathan Rosenfeld from his Northwestern University days, they went from producing shows annually to managing a staff of more than 100 employees between their flagship theater and two touring Chicago Boom companies. When Schaefle and his co-founders’ philosophies diverged, he knew it was time for a new occupation. Where do you go from the world of comedy? Even Schaefle himself would not have answered medicine. “I couldn’t identify a career that I could love as much, but then one day I remembered what it was like to be involved in college,” he says. “I remembered how nourishing the seminars were, how exciting it was to go to a lecture at 9 a.m. and listen to an intelligent person.” Within that same week, he met someone who graduated from a postbaccalaureate premedical program, and it was a serendipitous encounter. This would be his path, and, after researching programs, he found Columbia’s Postbac Premed Program would light the way. “Columbia was serious about what it was doing, and it felt right,” he says. “The deans were so supportive … and the faculty were very personable and patient. I never felt like they wanted us to leave their office during 1 office hours or they were looking at their phone. I felt they were committed to us understanding the material.” Schaefle, despite being older than many applicants, felt the opposite of discrimination when he applied to medical school. “The message I got was that they were happy to have my life experience in the classroom,” he says. Graduating from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he now works in the global health faculty group as an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Schaefle finds himself in another place he did not expect—Uganda. For at least three to four months out of each year, he practices medicine within about 50 miles of the borders of Rwanda and the Republic of Congo. “You really need to connect with people and help them to trust you,” Schaefle says. “They’re dealing regularly with tough diseases like tuberculosis … Sometimes because of lack of money or even trust, they wait so much longer to get help. But I’ve gone back and found I couldn’t even recognize a person I treated because they’re now so much healthier.” As we talk, he is preparing for another trip to Africa. He admits he must get himself in the right frame of mind—preparing himself for 11-hour days, seven days a week and spending much of his off hours reading medical literature. Schaefle confesses that he misses being a part of the comedy world at times but his desire to prompt smiles did not go away when he left the business of improv. “Doing this work in Uganda, I’ve really shared some great laughs with patients,” he says. “A sense of humor can help!”