In May, Ghislaine Guez became the first student to complete the MD/MBA program jointly offered by the School of Business and the Miller School of Medicine.   The program, launched fall 2008, adds a year of business education following the third year of the traditional four-year MD track.

"I realized early on that policies and administrative issues have a direct impact on patient care," says Guez. "I knew that I wanted to help as many people as possible, and for me, this meant being involved in the day-to-day business of medicine and how we run our hospitals. When the MBA program came along, it was the perfect fit."

Guez, known to her friends as "Gilly," was born in St. Louis Park, Minn., but raised in Boca Raton and Paris. No one in her family worked in the medical field, and she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with an undergraduate degree in psychology.

"I decided to become a doctor a few years after graduating from college," she explains. "I was working for a New York City surgeon as a technical writer, and I realized that I could actually do the things I was writing about." That realization drove Guez to take some pre-med courses at Columbia University while continuing to work fulltime. "Once I knew that it was possible to go back to school and become a physician, I never gave it a second thought," she says.

Why did she come to UM to study medicine? "The faculty and students I met when I came to interview were the most friendly, caring, interested and involved that I had come across. I knew that I wanted to learn medicine in a positive and supportive environment."