2020 ACGME Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Preston Howard Blomquist, MD is a professor and vice chair for education, as well as a residency program director for ophthalmology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern).

This is one in a series of project profiles of the ACGME’s Back to Bedside initiative, which empowers residents and fellows to develop innovations that foster meaning and joy in work and engage their patients on a deeper level.

2020 Debra L. Dooley GME Program Coordinator Excellence Awardee Kimberly Brown, C-TAGME is the GME program coordinator for emergency medicine at Duke University Hospital.

2020 David C. Leach Awardee Daniel Leifer, MD is a dermatology resident at the University of Washington, and a board-certified pediatrician.

2020 ACGME GME Institutional Coordinator Excellence Awardee Taiwana Mearidy, MBA is the associate director, institutional coordinator at the Emory University School of Medicine.

Parker J. Palmer Courage to Lead Awardee John Patrick T. Co, MD, MPH is the designated institutional official at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Lisa Willett, MD, MACM, is the internal medicine residency program director and vice chair for education in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Debra L. Dooley came to the ACGME 22 years ago, initially in an administrative role with the Review Committee for Internal Medicine. She retires today, after 10.5 years as the Director of Educational Activities, where she leads the team responsible for producing the ACGME’s educational programming, and most notably the Annual Educational Conference. We spent some time with her before she left, discussing her career, her mentors, her legacy, and the renaming of the Debra L. Dooley Program Coordinator Excellence Award.