A Bigger Table

On detours, a fateful dinner and learning what medicine really is

I came to podiatry the long way around. Before I ever set foot in the Dr. William M. Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine, I had an MBA, a career in real estate and a front-row seat to the 2008 financial collapse. When it all fell apart, my wife and I — high-school sweethearts who’d been mapping out our futures together since we were teenagers — decided to do what we’d always done: figure it out together.

Medicine wasn’t entirely foreign to me. My mother was a nurse, and I spent many a childhood afternoon on hospital wards watching her take care of patients. My wife had always wanted to pursue a medical career, and we began shadowing different kinds of doctors. We both fell in love with podiatry when we met a husband-and-wife podiatry team who were beloved by their patients — pillars of the community and entrepreneurs like us. We both applied and were accepted to RFU.

I walked out knowing exactly why I was there. Not just to become a podiatrist. To become a physician who understands that medicine extends far beyond the exam room, and that the decisions made outside it shape everything that happens within it.

My first year at Scholl nearly undid me. I’d never taken biochemistry. Never opened a genetics textbook. I was scraping through on remediation and resolve. There were nights when I sat and honestly wondered: Am I in the right place?

Then Matt Garoufalis, DPM ’82, invited me to dinner. The legendary podiatrist, a past president of the Illinois Podiatric Medical Association (and future American Podiatric Medical Association president), talked about podiatry’s fight to stay funded under Illinois Medicaid, about how our specialty was classified within the VA vs. the broader medical corps, about the lobbying and volunteerism organized medicine demanded, and the passion it required.

I walked out knowing exactly why I was there. Not just to become a podiatrist. To become a physician who understands that medicine extends far beyond the exam room, and that the decisions made outside it shape everything that happens within it. I spent the rest of my years at Scholl chasing every committee, every conversation, every seat at tables where policy was being shaped.

My wife and I now have a successful clinical practice, but I’ve slowly transitioned to advocacy work, educating, gathering grassroots support and making the case for preventive medicine to legislators. I’m the newest trustee of the American Podiatric Medical Association, which puts me squarely in Dr. Garoufalis’ footsteps.

That dinner in my first year of podiatry school didn’t just change my direction. It showed me how big the table actually is. And that I have a place at it.