Physician Now Heals the Spirit
Written by Corinne Garcia Thursday, August 04 2011
Snapshot: Wendy Sternberg
For Dr. Wendy Sternberg, art always played an important role in her life, but with a career as a doctor in internal medicine, it was always on the periphery. Her life took a dramatic shift as she founded Genesis at the Crossroads (GATC), a Chicago-based nonprofit organization that bridges cultures in conflict through the arts.
Now the organization’s executive director, Sternberg talks with Womenetics about making the transition from medical healer to global healer and how art can lead the way.
Womenetics: How was the idea for Genesis conceived?
Wendy Sternberg: My career in internal medicine brought me to Chicago. My life prior was always about balancing life and humanity. I was filling in artwork around the edges of becoming a physician.
In 1998, I took a course about how the framework of a life gets put together and looking at whether that life serves all of you. The course looked at relationships in the past and relationships to the community, and it was about your natural expression of leadership and self-expression. We had a three-month time frame to create a project that shares and reflects. Whatever we decided on, we had to use the course to carry it out in a tangible format.
What I wanted to put into the community was an opportunity to explore awareness appreciation and celebration of diversity. I felt that the best vehicle for that was art because it’s neutral and creative. I was never looking to transition careers or create a nonprofit. It was just the homework of a course.
Womenetics: At the time you were a doctor. Were you happy with your career and work?
Sternberg: My career in medicine was thriving; I was contented, feeling like I was giving back to society and my community. I had some frustrations with medicine, but I was not really looking to find another career.
Womenetics: How did that all shift?
Sternberg: It was very organic. I think people have this sense that something just comes to you, but really it’s a process where you grow as part of the process.
When I created the first program, it was a half-day program about bringing people together to share their art. This was the first time artists came together because of our organization and created new music. As this grew, I grew with it. I was aware that this was valuable and important, but it was more on the hobby side of things.
As it gained traction and more people got involved, in 2004 it ended up as a full-fledged outdoor festival. We worked with the mayor’s office and wanted to approach it from a cross-cultural collaboration model, transcending the barriers. We rounded up 130 artists from all over Middle East and North Africa in four months and toured around the United States. We eventually played at the Kennedy Center and the U.N. as part of its 60th anniversary celebration.
In 2005 there was a moment where on profound levels I realized that if I want this to be a career it could be. I didn’t know that I wanted that, I just knew if we were already at the Kennedy Center, there was a lot of traction. I started working part-time in medicine, and my hours at Genesis went up.
As a person transitioning, it was not always clear-cut; for me they overlapped. I was reframing my personal identity.
Womenetics: Going from doctor to executive director of a nonprofit organization, do the two professions have any similarities?
Sternberg: As a physician, I took care of people who were part of my society, and so there was quite a bit of who I am – as a physician and a healer – in the community. I had patients for long periods, and I grew with them. Their health care needs evolved as my time with them evolved. You can look at the whole aspect of community healing and understand where I have this dichotomy. Genesis was about community healing.
Womenetics: How did GATC take off with you spending more time on it?
Sternberg: From 2005 forward, as I worked on this project and we did this collaboration effort with musicians. I realized we needed our own identity, our own ensemble. It was using art as a vehicle to connect and to heal, and there were a lot of criteria in pulling this group together. We needed a group that represents different cultures, and they had to be willing to embrace the message of peace building through art.
In 2007, we founded the Genesis world music ensemble, Saffron Caravan.
Womenetics: How do the GATC ensemble and other programs work toward healing?
Sternberg: There are musicians from Iran, Afghanistan, Cuba, Morocco, and the United States. These artists may not share a language, but they play instruments and connect at a very profound level.
At a concert in Casablanca, the majority of the audience was made up of Moroccan Muslims. The musicians had no common language between them, and here they are in a theater with a Muslim audience, doing a series of programs, some in seven different languages.
The audience was on its feet; there was a celebration. It was on a human level; it was not about the fact that this person is from this culture or that ethnic background. You can no longer look at the other side as an enemy, but as someone that had touched you on a different level. It’s using art to engage people in a conversation. We don’t have to distance each other to feel safer; we are safer by engaging with each other.
Womenetics: How has the global community supported this effort?
Sternberg: I think it runs the gamut. In Casablanca, we were supported by the U.S. State Department, so now we’re at the level of government. We performed in Morocco, playing for the King of Morocco. A king wanted to highlight, embrace, and lend his name to our valuable work for the world.
Womenetics: Why does art have this much power, enough to change the world?
Sternberg: Art offers something much deeper about human expression. When we use art to connect, it’s touching our feelings. The root causes of conflict are when people feel misunderstood. If there’s an opportunity to engage, share, and be known, then conflict wanes. It’s a cultural crossroads, and it happens on a one-on-one level, sometimes through this form of indirect interaction.
Womenetics: What are the challenges of running a nonprofit organization?
Sternberg: I think that there’s always a distinction drawn between for-profits and nonprofits. One is always about the balance sheet, the other is mission driven. But a lot crosses over and needs to run the same. The mission and passion without money don't go anywhere.
All the big work occurs at the board table and who you align with as community partners. When choosing a board, you have to do your due diligence and make sure you’re on the same page ideologically. There are tough choices about who should stay on the board in the nonprofit world, because people are volunteering their time and should love what they’re doing. One thing that’s challenging is to hold people to responsibilities, and most are involved in fundraising.
Womenetics: How would you describe your leadership style?
Sternberg: My leadership style is bilateral. We all grow, impact the community around us, and they impact us. It’s an ecosystem.
As a woman and a physician, I bring a certain amount of compassion and cultural differences. I make a clear effort to have people in the organization who are of color, gender balance, different walks of life. All of that is very important to me on a leadership level.
As far as the board goes, you have to make sure it’s a team rowing in the same direction. It’s hierarchy, but leadership from behind and only as good as the leadership around you. I give people the benefit of the doubt and keep people around a little longer than I should, which goes back to my connection to people. We’re in the process of building an academy of global leadership to teach young people with an art-focused curriculum. We’re training global leaders, and the very people we are creating a curriculum for will have all the important things that I need on my board.
Womenetics: What do you envision for the future of Genesis?
Sternberg: In 2011, the escalation of conflict makes our work so timely. We don’t have time, so we need a razor-sharp focus and for accountability to be really clear. I’m looking at bringing in a youth component to our board, bringing in younger people to be in leadership roles. I believe that younger people have skill sets I don’t have, particularly in technology and social media. I think they have things to teach me as well.
Womenetics: What advice do you have for women looking to make a difference in their communities?
Sternberg: Get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself with things you’ve never done before. Find people you greatly admire and learn about their lives. And listen to your heart.
Womenetics: How about advice about going through a career transition?
Sternberg: When you start to notice that your energy comes from the work you do, pay attention to that. When I was in my transition, at the end of a day working on Genesis, I had more energy at the end of a 15-hour day than I did in the beginning of that day.
Some people call it a “calling,” but when you find that fulfillment and energy it’s so clearly communicating something to you.
Womenetics: What do you do purely for fun?
Sternberg: I dance in Chicago, and I swim. I’m a very active person. The things I really enjoy doing have a lot to do with art. I listen to a lot of music, but I don’t play music anymore. And I love going out into nature.
Corinne Garcia is a freelance writer and editor living with her husband and two young boys in Bozeman, Mont. She has also written for Women’s Adventure, Christian Science Monitor, Northwest Travel, Pregnancy, Fit Pregnancy, and Fit Parent.
