Leading Women “Many times people think leadership comes with a title. I think leading is about creating opportunities to change the status quo.”
Alu mnae Pro fil es | L ea d in g Wo men
Nicole Gibran ’77 As a fourth-year medical student at Boston University, Nicole Gibran ’77 wanted to challenge herself. She sought out the most difficult rotation she could find and ending up spending a month in an L.A. burn unit. One patient was a 17 year-old girl who, erroneously thinking she was pregnant, set herself on fire. Nicole’s mentor sat at the end of the girl’s bed, reading her the Bible. “I thought, ‘How could anyone be a burn surgeon?’” she recalls. But Nicole was already interested in wound healing research. “I thought maybe this was a small niche where I could make a difference.” Today, Nicole is a professor of surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine and director of the UW Medicine Regional Burn Center at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. A researcher as well as a clinician, she is an expert in burns, trauma, critical care and wound healing, with a particular interest in the role nerves play in wound repair. She entered the field at a critical point in its evolution, just as medicine was making major advances in pain control and skin grafting. Burn patients have much better chances of survival and can look forward to much better quality of life, says Nicole, than they did just 25 years ago. “I love the fact that we have the opportunity to help people who have sustained a traumatic, painful injury that’s life changing,” she says. “If we can get them through the initial trauma, then we can help them rebuild their lives. She also loves the collaborative environment at the burn center, where she has worked since her early 30s. Today, as its director, she works to foster the crucial partnerships between physicians, and other experts in the field. “Burn surgeons realized 40 years ago that we couldn’t do it without nurses and therapists. I’ve adopted the multidisciplinary approach to leadership my mentors had,” she says. “Many times people think leadership comes with a title. I think leading is about creating opportunities to change the status quo.” Nicole was still in Lower School when she realized she wanted a career in medicine. A Jan Term visit to the Deaconess Hospital to see classmate Karen Bougas Linn’s father, a thoracic surgeon, at work was one seminal event, she says. It wasn’t until the end of her second year of medical school, when she had an opportunity to go into the OR with an otolaryngologist, that she understood she wanted to be a surgeon—a field still dominated by men at the time. Her advisor discouraged her aspirations to be a surgeon, cautioning her that she wouldn’t have a wife to rely on as men in the field did. “I heard it as a challenge,” says Nicole. “Being a leader in some ways has to do with defying the odds and doing what you think is right for yourself.” It was a trait instilled in her by her parents’ unwavering support and her experiences at Winsor. An outstanding science student, Nicole was encouraged to take an electrophysiology class at MIT during her senior year. Not only was she the only high school student, she was the only girl. “It never dawned on me that a high school student shouldn’t be doing that because that’s the sort of experience Winsor encourages you to embark on,” she says. “Winsor filled me with a self-confidence that is hard to replace, starting at a very young age.” Jacqueline Mitchell ’92, a writer in Brookline, Mass., contributed this profile.
26 Winsor Bulletin
spring 2016 27