My crazy life ride with Regina Holliday, at #TEDxAlvaPark , Detroit Michigan, USA

As we were walking out of the #TEDxAlvaPark speaker dinner at The Henry Ford (@TheHenryFord) the night before the event, I asked Regina if we should make any changes to our talk, now that we had interacted with the other amazing, accomplished presenters. Her response frames the title of this post:

So that’s what we did. Our slides are below, the YouTube video is coming soon, and here are the live tweet photos I took of Regina from the stage:

Get it? It was amazing.

What we did the day before was also amazing. When I asked Regina if she would rather (a) Go to the Motown Museum and see the room where Diana Ross changed history or (b) Go to Wayne State Medical School , tour by Phil Kucab (@phillipkucab), she chose the Medical School. Why? Because she’s on a mission, and she wants to learn.

So we went, and I saw so many artifacts that showed that medical education is changing. There’s a small medical student art gallery. The ping pong room (every medical school has one), has a make shift photo studio where Phil photographs people for World AIDS Day Detroit (@AIDSdayDetroit). These may be imperceptible to the students there today, but I sure noticed them because I had access to neither, much less to a patient advocate visiting me when I was in medical school.

Regina says I tend to notice things on the edges that are significant (to me anyway). When I picked out my favorite photographs of the trip, I realized that they are of the moments of flow, where Phil was showing us his world from behind a grand piano, Regina inspiring Allison, Phil’s colleague, who has an art history background and beautiful photograph on display, me watching Phil and Regina talking over lunch and thinking, “I’m trying to keep up with these two.” It’s life in the innovation clown car. I never want to get out of it.

As I have said on here before, I don’t use a camera to take pictures, I use it to capture the beauty of the human spirit. I took so many photographs in just 24 hours, many more than I usually do, which tells me something about what I found in Detroit with Regina :). Below are my favorites, you can access the whole collection here.

With great thanks to our hosts at the Henry Ford Health System Innovation Institute (@HenryFordIdeas), and the institution it supports, is part of, and trains a new generation of leaders. The woman in the sunglasses, by the way, is Taryn Simon, our most excellent host, who unfortunately was in a car accident the day before. She’s doing fine, but I had to get a few shots of “Texts from Taryn” , don’t worry, there won’t be a Tumblog with this one :).

6 Comments

This was wonderful to read and look at. The photographs are stunning and I’m so thankful you shared them. But more it’s you two that shine through… Congratulations on a successful journey. We’re all so grateful for your ongoing, relentless hard work.

Ted Eytan, MD