Linda Pololi, MBBS, FRCP
Leadership
- Distinguished Research Scientist, Brandeis University
- Resident Scholar, Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center
- Director, The National Initiative on Gender, Culture and Leadership in Medicine: C – Change
- Director, C – Change Mentoring and Leadership Institute
Profile
Linda Pololi is nationally recognized for her research and innovative contributions to the professional and personal development of faculty in academic medicine, including women and underrepresented minority groups. She developed — and is a leading proponent of — an evidence-based collaborative group approach to mentoring and leadership development that is predictably reliable in facilitating career enhancement for medical faculty.
Pololi currently directs the C – Change Mentoring and Leadership Institute at Brandeis University. She was recently awarded a five-year grant by NIH to study the efficacy and mechanisms of action of the C – Change Mentoring and Leadership Institute. Her recent multi-institutional research on the academic medical environment showed the importance of the "culture" to faculty vitality (the topic of her recent book), challenging academic leaders to be change agents.
A graduate of the University of London Middlesex Hospital Medical School, she has held faculty and administrative positions at the Universities of Illinois, East Carolina, Brown and Massachusetts, where she was a professor of medicine and vice chancellor for education. Pololi’s research and efforts to improve education for students, residents and faculty have emphasized humanizing the learning environment, learner-centered and relationship-based methods to facilitate vitality, learning, physician-patient communication, mentoring and multiculturalism.
A recipient of numerous grants and contracts, she serves as consultant to many medical schools. Formerly the principal investigator and founding director for the U.S. Public Health Service-funded National Center of Leadership in Academic Medicine at ECU, she is presently the founding director of the National Initiative on Gender, Culture and Leadership in Medicine (C – Change) at Brandeis University. Dedicated to improving the culture of academic medicine through research and action, C – Change aims to promote an inclusive, affirming, relational and energizing working environment for all faculty and trainees, and to increase diversity of leadership in academic medicine. The C – Change surveys, which assess the prevailing work culture in medical institutions, are used widely in the United States, Canada and Europe.
Pololi is the recipient of the 2011 Association of American Medical Colleges Women in Medicine and Science Leadership Development Award, and is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (UK). She has published numerous research articles on the culture of academic medicine and a book, "Changing the Culture of Academic Medicine: Perspectives of Women Faculty" (Dartmouth College Press). She is a certified facilitator for the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare and the Center for Courage & Renewal.