SHSMD Connections 2025 General Sessions
Sunday Opening Keynote
The Poet’s Keys: A Guide to Unlocking Innovation in Health Care Strategy
Tucker Bryant, Poet & Innovation Keynote Speaker
Patients and stakeholders expect more, and the health care landscape is constantly evolving with new disruptions. To thrive, health care professionals must embrace innovation and adaptability.
Despite these challenges, McKinsey has found that only 6% of leaders feel fully tapped into their teams’ potential to nurture original thinkers who actively shape the future of their organizations. Tucker Bryant, after a decade alongside world-class innovators at institutions like Stanford and Google, offers a unique perspective: the outlook of a poet.
As a nationally renowned poet, Tucker has identified five powerful tools poets have relied on for millennia to break free from comfort zones and innovate through language. These tools provide health care leaders with the expanded perspective needed to navigate uncertain futures.
In this keynote, Tucker reveals how The Poet’s Keys™ empower health care professionals to unlock enhanced creativity, collaboration, and competitive advantage in marketing, communications, and strategic planning. Audiences will leave equipped with the tools to foster a culture of creative disruption and bold exploration, ensuring their organizations lead the industry rather than remain stuck in outdated models.
By adopting The Poet’s Keys™, health care professionals can:
• Enhance Creativity: Develop innovative strategies to engage patients and stakeholders.
• Improve Collaboration: Foster teamwork across departments to achieve common goals.
• Gain Competitive Advantage: Stay ahead of industry trends and disruptions.
This keynote is designed to inspire health care professionals to think differently, embrace change, and lead their organizations to success in an ever-evolving landscape.
Monday Featured Keynote
Beyond Boundaries: Transformational Leadership in Healthcare's New Era
Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, FACOG, President and CEO, Morehouse School of Medicine
As a physician, infertility specialist, and transformational leader in health care, Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice draws from decades of experience in clinical care, academic leadership, and public health to guide institutions through times of change and disruption. In this powerful keynote, she shares the leadership principles that helped elevate Morehouse School of Medicine to national prominence as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Dr. Montgomery Rice explores how strategic brand positioning, innovative partnerships, and abundance thinking can unlock extraordinary value despite the many constraints facing health care systems. She illustrates how “reputation capital” has become just as essential as financial capital and offers a blueprint for leveraging mission-driven leadership, even when resources are limited.
Health care strategists will walk away with data-informed frameworks and visionary insights to lead their organizations into a successful future.
- Strategic frameworks for building institutional reputation and market position during periods of industry transformation
- Practical approaches to developing innovative partnerships that expand organizational capacity and impact
- Leadership strategies for maintaining abundance thinking and institutional momentum when navigating resource constraints
Tuesday Keynote Session
Resilient to the Core: How to Improve Your Default Response to Stress to Boost Performance & Happiness
Michelle Gielan, Positivity Expert and Researcher; Best-Selling Author of Broadcasting Happiness: The Science of Igniting and Sustaining Positive Change
Stress has become one of the biggest barriers to high performance on and off the field, yet new research shows 91% of us could improve our default response to stress using simple positive habits. In one of the largest studies on stress of its kind, researcher and bestselling author Michelle Gielan has identified the three major dimensions of your stress response that predict your well-being and performance, and how to quickly shift from stuck to empowered. She shares the new research coming out of positive psychology and strategies for achieving 31% greater energy and 23% fewer stress-related symptoms. Audience members will learn how to identify the three major responses to stress that waste energy and leave us stuck, inoculate their brains against common stresses and negative people, use unavoidable stress to their advantage to boost performance, develop three habits to retrain their brains to be more resilient and optimistic in minutes, and cultivate interconnected teams to create cultures of high performance, optimism and sustainable resilience.