We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bahar Malekzadeh. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bahar below.
Hi Bahar, thanks for joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.
After completing Medical School, it wasn’t clear to me whether or not I wanted to pursue the career I had spent 4-years and many sleepless nights studying for. I was torn not only between the different medical specialties but also whether I wanted to be in medicine long term. Coming from a family of physicians who were all clinical, I struggled tremendously. I finally decided to take some time, explore my options and in the interim work/do research at a private Dermatology Clinic in NYC (which is where I was living at the time completing my clinical rotations).
It was there that I immediately started working more closely with the CEO who was a non-physician. He was responsible for the Operations, HR, Revenue Cycle and Finance of the business. Although the main physician and owner played a huge role with hiring physicians as well as the practice’s Strategy and Development, it was the CEO that that was ultimately responsible for implementation. At the time I came in, the CEO needed assistance as they were adding on a non-profit branch to the practice in addition to developing a luxury skincare line.
It was the story of being in the right place at the right time. It opened my eyes to all the things I could do with my MD degree without having to be clinical and I felt hopeful again about my future. I spent 2-full time years with them and it was there that I decided against pursuing clinical medicine, instead I applied/attended Business School!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My mother, sister and I are all physicians, but my sister and mom are practicing Gynecologists. We’d been talking for years about the disjointed service women receive with regards to their medical care, and how nice it would be if we could all combine our knowledge, experiences and skill sets together to address most of women’s non-urgent concerns in an outpatient office, all under one roof. At the time, all 3 of us were living in 3 different states working for large hospital systems within our fields – but it was my mom who hit the wall first, decided to leave corporate care and start her own private practice. It took about another 5-years for both my sister and I to follow suit. I left NYC after 18-years of building my personal and professional portfolio and a position as VP of Strategy and Network Development to dive into this venture.
Now we have a true Women’s Wellness Center in Westlake – 10,000 opulently-designed-square feet where women can receive all their Medical and Surgical Gynecology care, Hormone Replacement Therapy, Minimally invasive procedures, Labs and Ultrasound services PLUS address any Aesthetic or Skin concerns they may have. We offer many services to address health from the inside out, starting with Nutrition! We offer one of the top Nutritional Programs in the country alongside IV therapies, an Infrared Sauna, Skin Tightening and Muscle Firming modalities. We have skilled and experienced providers on staff who offer Injectables (Fillers, Biostimulators, Neurotoxins) and have access to state of the art laser machines to address any Skin, Texture, Discoloration or Tone issues you may have.
Our goal is to deliver excellent patient care all in one location so you can get your annual women’s wellness exam and a facial in a location where all the providers work intimately with one another hence understand how they’re addressing your care as a team. Where you can feel welcomed and actually enjoy spending a morning/afternoon with your daughter or girlfriend. That’s what makes us unique, we are family and women owned so we approach everything we do from that perspective. We treat each one of our patients like they’re the only ones, we know their stories, and my mom (Dr G) has up to 4 generations of families that she has taken care of.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
I do my best every single day to listen to my employees. I keep an open door policy so they feel comfortable coming to me with issues or questions. I create structure for them yet supply enough autonomy so they feel in control. The challenging part is that it’s not a one size fits all, you have to dance with your employees with the dance moves they know/have learnt.
Maintaining high morale comes down to the employer – and it is difficult. I do my best to stay positive and have a good outlook daily but it’s not always the case. I have come to learn that a few keys employees can help in this arena so it doesn’t always have to be me.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I was groomed to be a practicing physician – I had great grades in school, went to medical school but came out not feeling confident about it as a career. I had an MD degree which I didn’t know what to do with and I only knew what I knew which was Clinical Medicine. Although at the time it was very enticing (as it was easier) to apply/accept whatever residency I could get into, I knew in my heart and gut that that wasn’t the right answer for me, Medicine is extremely difficult from an educational standpoint and the responsibility you accept, but it’s also very easy because the path is fairly clear, you know what targets you need to hit to get to each of the next steps. But I had hit a point where my path had become unclear so I chose to do something out of the box for a time period to redefine my path. And now looking back I realize the strength and resilience that took. I didn’t take the path of least resistance and set to create my own path without having a clear direction while actually being dissuaded. I owe that to my resilience because at that age I didn’t trust myself enough to make moves like that.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://clevelandgyn.com
- Instagram: @the.well.westlake
- Facebook: The.Well.Westlake
- Linkedin: Bahar Malekzadeh, MD MBA
