John Erwin, III
Indiana University, Kelley School of Business
Age: 57
“I am a compassionate physician, dedicated to disturbance, leadership, health care, excellence, and with an unwavering commitment to community.”
Hometown: Hillsborough, Texas
Family Members: I’ve been married to my wife, Susie for more than thirty years. We have two sons, who are both married. The oldest is John, IV (or called Jay by the family) is married to Caroline and has a son, John V, who we call Vaughn. And the youngest is Eric who’s married to Martha. Both my parents and my mother-in-law also round out our family.
Fun fact about yourself: I played division 1 football in college. I also own a Longhorn ranch in Texas, but they basically serve as big dogs for my wife.
Undergraduate School and Degree:
- Medical School, Texas A&M College of Medicine, 1992
- Residency, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, 1995
- Fellowship, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
- MBA, Kelley School of Business, 2024
Where are you currently working? I serve as the Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at Endeavor Health, formerly known as North Shore University Health System. I work clinically as a cardiologist, and also serve as the Louis Louise W. Coon, chair for the Department of Medicine. And I’m also professor at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine, where I teach internal medicine and cardiology as a clinical professor.
Extracurricular Activities, Community Work and Leadership Roles: I’m involved with the North Shore Community Ambassador Program, which assists with community organizations to determine their needs, and I serve as a representative for the community. My wife and I have been involved with Connections for the Homeless. I’m still on the on the board of directors for a free clinic called the body of Christ Free Clinic. And I’m still involved with a coaches mentoring group called Coaches Outreach.
Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? Being selected as the only male on the American College of Cardiology, Women in Cardiology Leadership section is one of my best achievements. I was one of the inaugural males to be on the leadership. It’s given me a unique perspective in terms of what male versus female physicians deal with different stressors. And it has allowed me to kind of help to mentor, coach, sponsor advocate for people that are that are having a more difficult time with professional equity.
What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? But you know honestly what I’m most proud of are the people that that I’ve been able to work with. I’ve got countless students, residents, fellows, and professional peers that I’ve helped to coach and mentor across the years. Many, if not most of them, still reach out to me regularly to either express appreciation for that, or to continue to seek my advice, both clinically and from a life coaching standpoint. So, it’s the people. I’ve had a lot of people pour into me over the years, and it’s just been great to pay that forward.
Why did you choose this school’s executive MBA program? I’ve been debating doing an MBA for probably over 10 years, as I’ve kind of evolved through my leadership journey. And so, I’ve really explored, for a lot of years, and I think two things kind of help me to come to my conclusion. One is that I have had the ability to work very closely with physicians who have been through the Kelley PMBA Program and other who chose a different program. With many of the other programs, they don’t come out with usable tools. And what I found from the graduates from the Kelley School is just tremendous leadership abilities; most of them are very quick to credit things that they learn during their MBA studies at Kelley and so that was a big part of it for me.
The other piece, and really the icing on the cake, was the executive coaching that Kelley provides, both while in the program and after graduation. When you reach a certain level of leadership, it’s tough to get good critical feedback. And so that executive coaching is also been a huge part and I think a distinguishing factor for Kelley. I think that’s something that’s an amazing part of what goes on through the Kelly School.
What is the biggest lesson you gained during your MBA and how did you apply it at work? I think the biggest one was really just reconfirming my thoughts that what I do in my profession requires both science and art. I was able to apply so much immediately, between finance, accounting, analytic and process management tools and then gaining a better grasp of organizational behavior, negotiation and persuasion. It has also enriched my communications with our C-suite leaders, as well as all my team members who report to me.
Give us a story during your time as an executive MBA on how you were able to juggle work, family and education? I’m thankful that I have a supportive wife that is understanding of my time commitments. We’ve been married for more than 30 years but been together for 40 years this year. In my current role, I’m working 90-110-hours in a typical week. But during the most recent winter quarter, my team members were hit with personal life challenges. Along with being on call, that made it difficult working through our capstone project for our process improvement Lean 6 sigma course. And I’m also writing a complex paper on microeconomics and supporting with my own family through a personal tragedy as well.
Even though it was a tough time, each of our team members were pitching in at crucial times for one another and providing emotional and social support to one another. Also, the program and faculty members gave us grace, provided extensions and bent over backwards to help. The program proved it knows how to balance the struggles of working clinicians and clinical leaders.
I’ve also proven to myself that I can balance the needs of profession and MBA training. Over the last two years while completing the program, I’ve also published six Peer Review Journal articles from my own Discipline and presented two abstracts at the American College of Cardiology meetings.
What advice would you give to a student looking to enter an executive MBA program? The thing to remember is to budget your time and give yourself grace. I put scheduled time on my calendar almost every day to ensure that I got enough study and prep time. In our regular jobs, things compete. I could spend all day and all night doing that job and never be finished either. But I really carved out the time to make sure that I could do that.
Susanna, as the program director, also gave us some profound advice right from the start, and she kept repeating it throughout the entire two years of the coursework. She stressed that our first priority was our family, second priority was our ‘real job’ and that our MBA work came third. And that served me quite well throughout my time at Kelley.
What is the biggest myth about going back to school? I think the misconception of having untenable reading loads and course work commitments was the biggest myth I debunked. And sure, there were times I felt that way However, with the discipline, time management tricks, it’s definitely doable for physician. I mean, if I can do it with a 110-hour week job, I believe any physician can.
What was your biggest regret in business school? I would have loved to have gotten to know every member of my cohort mates in a very profound way. And I I’ll say that with most of them I have. But there, I’m I would imagine there’s still a little more than a handful that that I don’t know very well, and you know every one of the experiences. There was something in the connection that was a huge gift to me. I’m sure I could have learned more if I had the opportunity, and hopefully I will between now and the Washington trip that I’ll get to get to know those others that that I don’t know quite as well.
Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Ngum Ngwa, MD is a single, widowed mother who had just completed a pediatrics residency, and was starting a busy, neonatal perinatal medicine fellowship when she started in our MBA cohort. She was a member of my first small group when we began the first quarter, and she was cheerful and helpful to the team, despite all those pressures being a single mom still in medical training. She was so amazing balancing all of her priorities. I learned from her in a variety of ways – and here is one example. I was a fairly novice Excel user when I started the program, and she was wonderfully patient with me as she helped leveled me up to expert status. I think that she’s one of the people who make me hopeful for our future in health care leadership. She always has an optimistic approach and diligent work ethic, despite all the stressors and is always pleasant to be around.
What was the main reason you chose an executive MBA program over part-time or online alternatives? I wanted an experience that was either equal to or superior to the C-suite MBA graduates that are in my organization. I also really do enjoy learning and the personal interactions that we have with the residency components and with my cohort as well as faculty and program leadership.
And in my opinion, you just really can’t accomplish that online, or even in some of these condensed format MBAs. I think it makes it much more difficult to get that richness of the of the people that you’re working with.
What is your ultimate long-term professional goal? My long-term goal is to improve health care for those who give it, and for those who receive it and on the broadest scale possible. I want to improve clinical outcomes as well as how our health care teams and patients interact within our health care system.
I also want to be able to effectively influence healthcare policy makers so that we can improve our system, not only in the U.S. Other possibilities I think down the line, would be to be a CEO, health care policy advisor, executive coach, or a combination of all three. That’s kind of the directionality where I see myself going.
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