What would working in our medical schools and hospitals be like if we cared for one another as if the lives of our patients depended on it? Or it could lead to the next big scientific breakthrough? Creating workplaces where each and every one of us can bring our whole self to work, where we are safe to speak up, where we honor and celebrate our differences – these are the places where the next big thing happens.

Jessica Halem will share how Harvard Medical School has led efforts to improve recruitment and retention, amplified voices of women and minority students, faculty and staff, and implemented programs and policies critical for diversity and inclusiveness. These efforts have resulted in growing first-year class matriculation of those who self-identify as LGBTQ from 4% to 15%.

About the presenter

Jessica Halem has worked on the front lines of equity and inclusion since the early 1990s when she was lawyer and social activist Bella Abzug’s Assistant and traveled to Beijing, China for the UN Conference on Women. Since then, Jessica has led the Lesbian Community Cancer Project in Chicago and served on Barack Obama’s first LGBT Advisory Committee. She has published on mentoring across difference, transgender healthcare, and organizational change. She received an MBA from Simmons University in Boston.

About the Dean's Lecture Series

This year, to commemorate 50 years since the Apollo moon landing, the ANU College of Health & Medicine Dean’s Lecture Series is titled Medical Moonshots, and focuses on innovative solutions to the biggest health challenges facing our nation and the world.

Just as ‘putting a person on the moon by the end of the decade’ was an audacious goal at the start of the 1960s, the challenges addressed in this year’s Dean’s Lecture Series are hugely significant, but they are also complex, uncertain, risky, and may even depend on technologies that aren’t yet developed.

Light refreshments will be served from 5.30pm prior to the lecture beginning at 6pm.