Professor Suetonia Green is looking forward to developing and strengthening relationships when she takes up the role of Dean of Te Kura Whaiora o Ōtepoti, Dunedin School of Medicine.
For Otago Professor Suetonia Green, returning to Dunedin feels like coming home.
The new Dean of Te Kura Whaiora o Ōtepoti, Dunedin School of Medicine, self-declared people person and team player, can’t wait to step into her new role on Monday.
“I grew up in Dunedin, and then walked these corridors as a student and as a junior doctor, so it’s great to be back.”
Previously Deputy Dean at the University of Otago, Christchurch, Suetonia is an academic kidney specialist whose research aims to improve health outcomes for people affected by kidney conditions. She was also a practising kidney specialist at Christchurch Hospital.
Suetonia sees the DSM Dean’s role as an important part of enabling the health of our communities through education and research. She feels ready to take on the challenge, given her previous roles and experience, and the people she has worked with who have encouraged and supported her, and “lifted me up”.
And it was a great opportunity to head back to Dunedin, the city she and her family moved to when she was five years old. She grew up in a North Dunedin house built by the Cargill family, which is now a student flat, and subsequently did her medical training here.
Suetonia is well aware of the challenges that the University and the Otago Medical School face at the moment around issues such as financial pressures, potential changes to the new Dunedin Hospital project and the possibility of a third medical school.
However, she is not one to shy away from a challenge and is clear about her priorities once she is Dean. The first of these is whakawhanaungatanga, because you can’t achieve things without strong relationships.
“My leadership style is to support people to work at the top of their scope. My first goal is to develop good working relationships – within the DSM, across the Division of Health Sciences and with organisations such as Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora – to achieve that.”
Suetonia also wants to have a deeper understanding of the challenges because “you can’t build strategies and solutions without knowing what the challenges really are”.
A shifting sciences environment, such as changes to funding bodies’ priorities, means serious thought needs to be given to how best to support high value health research and researchers. Clinicians in our health education system also need to be supported so they can continue to thrive.
“I know some people are feeling pretty fragile, which makes it hard to be creative and curious.
“We need to support each other to ensure we strengthen the medical school so its core activities are supported and protected and elevated.”
Suetonia didn’t have any set career in mind when she attended Otago, where her father was an academic in the Department of Anatomy, but she “followed my nose” to end up studying medicine.
“I’m so glad I ended up in medicine because I’m such a people person. I deeply, deeply love people so this is the perfect profession for me.”
After graduating as a doctor, she did her PhD with the Christchurch Heart Institute, before completing her post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.
Coincidentally, Suetonia is often caught up in significant events – she arrived at Harvard just after Barack Obama took up his presidency, and started at Otago’s Christchurch campus a month before the February 2011 earthquake.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (FRSNZ) in recognition of the high impact of her research. An Otago Distinguished Professor, she has received numerous major awards for her research including the L’Oreal For Women in Science fellowship, a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, the University of Otago Carl Smith Medal and Rowheath Trust award, a Research Gold Medal at the University of Otago, Christchurch, and the Don and Lorraine Jacquot Fellowship from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
And what does this teacher, researcher and clinician do in her (limited) spare time? Well, the answer is, plenty.
Suetonia loves gardening, running, exploring the outdoors, sewing, knitting, quilting, food and, most importantly, spending time with friends.
“Relationships with friends are so important to me. I work very hard to spend time and energy with people.”
Suetonia replaces Professor Jo Baxter, who finished in the role in June. Deputy Dean Professor Lynley Anderson has been Acting Dean in the interim. As well as being DSM Dean, Suetonia will also retain her position as Associate Dean (Medical Admissions), a role she loves.
“The whole journey is so important for medical students, from when they apply to when they graduate.”
– Kōrero by Andrea Jones, Team Leader, Divisional Communications