Career advancement & family life: perspectives from a Medical Officer of Health with Lawrence Loh

03/10/20 • 43 min

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We launched the Career Advancement and Family Life series in the last episode with our guest Lathika Laguwaran. We are big believers here at PH SPOT of learning from those who have done something before us and using their lessons and experiences to craft our own path. We want to share the stories of public health professionals at various phases of their lives and careers to get a glimpse into their way of life and thinking. We hope you will reach out to us and share your perspectives and experiences with the public health community.

Show Notes

In this episode, Sujani sits down with Lawrence Loh. You may recognize his name from two very popular posts on the PH SPOT blog: Start with Yes and Choosing impact over location: the myth of the “global health gamble”.

When we talk about career advancement and family life, TIME is an important topic. Our relationship with time changes as we progress through our careers and when we begin to build a family. This is exactly how our conversation with Lawrence begins: how time has changed for him during his career, and how this has influenced the opportunities and choices he has made.

We also get to hear about the decisions Lawrence has had to make with discontinuing clinical work, and reprioritizing where and how he uses his time. With two young daughters that mean everything to him, Lawrence is very particular with how he spends his time, and we were so grateful he said yes to sit down with us to share his perspective on career advancement and family life.

You’ll Learn

“Time” as it relates to building your career
How “time” has changed for Lawrence over the course of his career and children came into the picture
How and why he decided to conduct an inventory of his activities to reprioritize his time and consolidate various activities when he was expecting his second child (for example, he decided to stop practicing clinical medicine – we talk about how that made him feel)
The way Lawrence sees one’s life and early career – divided by the following 5 standard phases:
- Inquiry/questioning phase
- Generative phase
- Consolidation phase
- Second generative phase
- Second inquiry phase
How once he got to the consolidation phase he rediscovered his love for fictional writing (he’s even got the manuscripts written!)
What a typical day looks like at work and at home
How he set up his parental leave
Though it is not his lived experience, we discuss starting a family in the “inquiry phase”, rather than later on in one’s career (as was the case for Lawrence)
Five career tips he wraps up the conversation with:
- Nothing is irreversible
- The past decisions you make often shape your future decisions (sometimes you need to walk through one door to get to th

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Join The Public Health Career Club: A global membership community where public health professionals connect, learn, and support each other in building meaningful and impactful careers.

Go from feeling confused, alone and overwhelmed, to feeling confident and in control of your life and career!

Tell us what you thought of this episode - send us a text!

Show Notes

You’ll Learn

“Time” as it relates to building your career
How “time” has changed for Lawrence over the course of his career and children came into the picture
How and why he decided to conduct an inventory of his activities to reprioritize his time and consolidate various activities when he was expecting his second child (for example, he decided to stop practicing clinical medicine – we talk about how that made him feel)
The way Lawrence sees one’s life and early career – divided by the following 5 standard phases:
- Inquiry/questioning phase
- Generative phase
- Consolidation phase
- Second generative phase
- Second inquiry phase
How once he got to the consolidation phase he rediscovered his love for fictional writing (he’s even got the manuscripts written!)
What a typical day looks like at work and at home
How he set up his parental leave
Though it is not his lived experience, we discuss starting a family in the “inquiry phase”, rather than later on in one’s career (as was the case for Lawrence)
Five career tips he wraps up the conversation with:
- Nothing is irreversible
- The past decisions you make often shape your future decisions (sometimes you need to walk through one door to get to th

Support the show

Join The Public Health Career Club: A global membership community where public health professionals connect, learn, and support each other in building meaningful and impactful careers.

Go from feeling confused, alone and overwhelmed, to feeling confident and in control of your life and career!

Previous Episode

Career advancement & family life: perspectives from a global health research manager, with Lathika Laguwaran

Tell us what you thought of this episode - send us a text!

Family life and career advancement is a topic that deserves more than just one episode so we are committing to bringing you different perspectives on this podcast. We are big believers here at PH SPOT of learning from those who have done something before us, and using their lessons and experiences to craft our own path based on our unique situations. We want to share the stories of public health professionals at various phases of their lives and careers to get a glimpse into their way of life and thinking. With the launch of the Career Advancement and Family Life series, we hope more of you will reach out to share your perspectives with the public health community.

In this week’s episode, Sujani sits down to speak with a good friend of hers, Lathika Laguwaran. Lathika is someone who Sujani has loved learning from since she met her back in 2012. Both Sujani and Lathika completed their Masters together at the University of Saskatchewan. After graduating from her MPH, Lathika took a role up with the Global Strategy Lab, not really thinking about whether she would stay in that role for too long.

Today, she has grown within the Global Strategy Lab and is the research manager, managing the operations of the lab and leading research projects pertaining to health news misinformation and international law. During this 6-7 year journey, Lathika also got married and became a mother; and that’s the journey we talk about in this episode.

You’ll Learn

About Lathika’s career progression within the Global Strategy Lab (GSL): from research assistant, to research coordinator, to research manager
How it is working on Stephen Hoffman’s team
Why Lathika chose to join the GSL despite a very low starting salary
How location played a role in her career journey (and how her commute has changed over the years)
The importance of building trust and a strong relationship within your organization for family life
What a day looks like at the GSL for Lathika
Things Lathika had to consider when her baby was born (i.e. childcare, family support)
The importance of being happy in your role for family life
How to have discussions about your role and change in family life with your manager
Transitioning back to work after parental leave: how things changed around her, what she had to change, how communication became a key factor during the transition period
How she manages extra curricular activities with family life and a career

Support the show

Join The Public Health Career Club: A global membership community where public health professionals connect, learn, and support each other in building meaningful and impactful careers.

Go from feeling confused, alone and overwhelmed, to feeling confident and in control of your life and career!

Next Episode

Pushing past your comfort zone in your public health career with James Flint

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Show Notes

You’ve probably heard of the saying “growth and change lies outside of your comfort zone”, and this is true for our careers too. To advance in our careers, we need to do things that we are not comfortable with, whether that’s standing up and presenting at a large meeting, saying yes to a project that scares us, or perhaps even pushing a little bit more than usual, and relocating to a new city or even country for a public health experience you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.

On this episode of PH SPOTlight, Sujani sits down with one of her mentors and someone who has pushed her to continuously push past her comfort zone, James Flint. James has worked in public health at the international, national and local levels with several governmental and non-governmental organizations around the world. We talk to James about pushing past our comfort zones and we hear about some of the decisions he has made to do so, from turning down permanent job offers to moving his family across the world, all of which have been driven by his “why question for his life”. As someone who is passionate about social justice, he really wanted to craft a career where it gave him opportunities to help other people...and that’s the reason he’s constantly pushing past his comfort zone.

James has constantly been an inspiration for Sujani’s public health career, and she hopes to bring that inspiration to you as well! We hope that this conversation with James leaves you inspired to think about how you too can push past your comfort zone in your public health career so that you can keep growing and serving.

You’ll Learn

How James is constantly thinking about pushing past his comfort zone and doing things differently.
That you don’t need to make drastic changes or decisions to push past your comfort zone.
How his “why” drives his life and career choices.
Two examples of how James pushed past his comfort zone, and what he was thinking during both of these times:
- Why James turned down a permanent and safe job the day before he was supposed to start so that he could take on a temporary post that offered more scope for international work.
- Why James decided to try out the STOP Polio mission even though he didn’t know anything about polio or the country he was going to be based in.
Why someone might be reluctant to push the boundary on their career, get out of their comfort zone and really challenge themselves.
That everyone feels incompetent from time-to-time, and that it’s common to have those feelings.
As a manager, James’s approach to hiring.
About some of the work he is doing in Australia (and his work with the WHO). (Stick around to the very end to listen to this part.)

Support the show

Join The Public Health Career Club: A global membership community where public health professionals connect, learn, and support each other in building meaningful and impactful careers.

Go from feeling confused, alone and overwhelmed, to feeling confident and in control of your life and career!

Public Health SPOTlight Podcast - Career advancement & family life: perspectives from a Medical Officer of Health with Lawrence Loh

Transcript

Lawrence00:00:00.000

I'll first start by saying, anyone's day, the days that we are given. It's up to you how you want to prioritize your time. Flexibility in being able and how you manage your time is probably one of the most essential components to happiness.

Sujani00:00:18.969

Welcome to PH SPOTlight, a community for you to build your public health career with. Join Us Weekly right here. And I'll be here too, your host Sujani Siva fr