00:00:05 – Commercial
Welcome to The Work-Life Equation, hosted by Priya Krishnan and Paul Sullivan. During this episode, you will hear from working parents just like you who understand the daily struggles and triumphs while finding our unique work-life equation. Now, here are your hosts.

00:00:23 - Priya Krishnan
Hello everyone, and welcome to The Work-Life Equations podcast. I'm Priya Krishnan. I'm the Chief Digital and Transformation Officer.

00:00:31 - Paul Sullivan
And I'm Paul Sullivan, the co-founder of The Company of Dads and your co-host with Priya for this season of the Work Life Equation podcast. Today, our guest is Doctor Ramon Jacobs-Shaw. Wildly accomplished man, UNC undergraduate medical school. His residency at Harvard went on to work both as a medical school professor and as a practicing physician. He's board certified in both pediatrics and internal medicine. His husband hoped. And Shaw is a psychotherapist and a psychoanalyst. But guess what? He's a dad. He's a parent just like the rest of us. And Ramon and Hopton, there are dads too. Two wonderful boys, twins, who are going to turn four pretty shortly. Ramon, thanks for being our guest today on the work like stage and podcast.

00:01:27 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
I am so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:01:31 - Paul Sullivan
You know, when you're starting out in your career, you know, you've just done so well, but you start off thinking, okay, there are these metrics that I have to achieve. If I want to get into medical school, I have to do this. If I want to be the type of doctor I want to be, I have to do this. You now work as the chief clinical officer for belong health, and so you pivot there in your life. It's been a remarkable journey. There are, you know, sort of markers along the way for professional success. How are those, you know, how has being a father maybe being a husband first, but how is being a husband and then a father, how did that fit into some of those markers of success that were, that were moving your career along as a physician?

00:02:19 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Such a great question, Paul. I have to forget, first off, say I haven't always been the best at demonstrating work life balance prior to getting married. Let's see, we've been in our relationship, my husband and I, since 2009. So we're coming up on 15 years, married for almost twelve of those. And prior to that, work life did not exist for me. It was really just work. So my metrics for success pre relationship were just to excel. Excel, Excel. Like, what can I do to be the best X that I can be? Whatever that X was, right? Be the best person, be the best son, be the best doctor that I could be and whatever those metrics were, to actually kind of encapsulate all of that, that's exactly what I did. I did whatever it took to be the best that I could absolutely be. And when I met my husband in 2009, it was like things were just so wildly different at that point. My priorities changed. My priorities shifted. It didn't mean that I didn't still want to be the best doctor I could be. I was still very much on that path. But at the same time, what became very important to me was that I need to have. I need to have balance in my life if I'm going to be the best doctor that I can be, but also, like, be the best partner, spouse that I can possibly be and completely forget it. Once I became a dad in 2020, I thought, I don't know. I don't know if it was just some of that being at the age that I'm at, but you think you have it all figured out and then you become a parent, and then you're like, I know absolutely nothing. Despite all of those degrees and everything you just mentioned, I felt like I knew absolutely nothing. But the only thing that I knew, and was 1000% for sure, was that I'm going to be the best dad that I can be, period. All of the other stuff takes a backseat to everything. So my metric for that changed when I had kids.

00:04:45 - Paul Sullivan
One of the things, Ramon, is parents, new parents, young parents, they go to their pediatrician and they have all kinds of questions. You fulfilled that role. People are coming to you, and can you believe what's going on, Ramon? How does that happen? You can say, well, you got to do the following things. When you look back on the advice that you gave those young parents coming to you, and then the advice that you get from your own pediatrician, or the advice that you take from yourself, as somebody who knows all of these questions because you've been asked them, what are some of the questions that really stick out to you?

00:05:24 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Well, I'm laughing only because I'm going to experience this for the rest of my life. Sitting in those exam rooms with parents of different ages, with children of different ages, giving that pediatric advice, there are many, many times, many times. And there are many times just in the past month where I've looked back and I've been like, I've had a clear recollection that I've completely forgotten about, by the way, a recollection of something that I advised a parent on. And then I'm actually going through that same thing right now. And I many times I've said, wow, you can be taught a lot of things in the, you know, what my dad would call, like, in the book realm, you know, all the book learning, and you go through your residency training and all of that. But when you're in those shoes as a parent, it's completely different. And I'll tell you just one of those examples one of the boys had. One of the boys had croup about, this was the end of 2022, and it was December, and it was, like, maybe a couple of weeks shy of Christmas, and he developed croup, and the cough got worse. And guess what? As croup does, croup got worse, and the cough got worse in the middle of the night. And so that cough was just a barking seal, if you can imagine what that barking seal sounds like. And that's what he sounded like just continuously in that first night of his symptoms. And I remember thinking, okay, I know what to do about this. But in those moments, I'm like, do I need to go to urgent care? Do I need to. Do I need to go to the hospital, the emergency room or something? And then I remembered, hey, like, cold air. And it was December, so we have plenty of that in Connecticut. But when I'm standing. When I open the door, our front door, and I'm standing out there in the cold with my child wrapped up in a blanket, and I'm like, I've told many parents this same advice, but now I'm standing here with my own child. And it just. It just dawned on me that, like, wow, I've given. I gave that advice so freely over time and sometimes didn't even about the context of that or even the logistics of how would a parent make that happen. And then I'm standing there, and then I learn a few things, and then the next time he has a creepy cough, which was just a couple of weeks ago, then I'm like, okay, I know what to do better next time. Like, crack open a window, for example, and not stand that in the frigid cold. But I've given that advice so many times for different things, and I. I often will tell some of my friends who are parents as well, like, wow, I've given so much advice over years and like to actually be that parent in that moment. It just sometimes, I don't know, I maybe feel like I'm a little bit silly, you know? Or who was I, this young person without kids to, like, expel this advice or dispel this advice to people not having gone through it myself. So now going through the advice, I mean, going through it myself, whenever people have or need advice or ask questions about things, it comes with a whole lot more context, a lot more experience, and a lot more of putting myself in the shoes of those people who are experiencing the same thing.

00:08:56 - Priya Krishnan
I was actually going to ask you a question around work life separation.

00:08:59 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Please do.

00:09:00 - Priya Krishnan
Because the thing is, I think most people seek work life integration, but in your case, it's almost, you seem to be making the most of it, which is when you are an expert in that space. My question was going to be, how does that impact you being a parent? But clearly you're taking being a parent back into the workplace, so that's pretty amazing. So.

00:09:23 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Oh, yes, yes. And it's. I can separate myself from being a doctor and a parent. Like, the one thing I don't want to do is I don't want to be the doctor to my kids. I don't want to be the doctor to my family. That, for me, would be incredibly, incredibly stressful. There's a lot of weight on the shoulders of a person who would kind of assume such a responsibility. And for me, I want to make sure that I separate that out because I'm also. Right. I'm also coming to this with kind of, like, tinted lens, you know, and I'm going to see it through the lens of a doctor. But also, like, what's going to, you know, really exceed any of that, really is, like, what I'm feeling as a parent at that point. And what we as parents feel sometimes may not be completely reasonable, just may not be completely reasonable. So I will. I will. I've always been that even with my own primary care, my primary care doctor and with my kids, I'm like, listen, I don't know everything. That's first and foremost. I don't know everything. I know my limits. And, you know, I will listen, I'll defer to, like, the smarter people in the room. And so the pediatrician for the boys are just, they're just really phenomenal people and really just think the world of them. But I do come into that with the pediatric experience as well, to be able, I know how to ask certain questions. I know how to ask them in certain ways, and I know how to have a dialogue about certain things. But also presuming that I don't know everything here, so I kind of set that as a baseline just to, you know, and it makes it easier. I don't want to be the impediment or barrier to you know, a family member's healthcare. You know what I mean? Including my kids.

00:11:15 - Paul Sullivan
Yeah. You know, when you became you and hoped and became dads, it was 2020. Correct.

00:11:22 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
It was the wild, topsy turvy 2020, June of 2020.

00:11:27 - Paul Sullivan
About perfect timing if you want to spend a lot of time inside as a family. When you think about this can be a two part question. It's the first part now, but when you think about all the planning, the months going into this, you know, you're going to become dads, and then COVID happens, and now you have to. You have sort of three months of this chaos, and then the boys are there. What was that like for you? As you thought, okay, I have this job, this career. Hoped. He has his job and his career, and now we're dads in this unprecedented rented time. What were some of the feelings that you felt during that?

00:12:04 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
How much time you got? Priya Krishnan. Like, we could do a whole episodes of a whole season of that. So let me take you a little bit further back. So we had our children through surrogacy, and the embryos were implanted in early November of 2019. Thankfully, first try, everything took. Everything was going great, and we just had everything mapped out for what the next several months were going to be like. And then as the pandemic was becoming the pandemic, things quickly shifted and changed. And there was an insertion of this whole other level of fear and anxiety that I had never experienced in my life. And I'll give you some examples. So when we, during that time, we were like, we were living this bicoastal life. We had our place in New York. I was working with a company based out of LA, and we were back and forth between the two. And February 28 of 2020, to be specific, is when we were, like, moving back to Brooklyn to make everything, put everything in place to get ready for the boys. And we all know that the lockdown started happening just weeks, weeks after that. And what was originally going to be back and forth over to Southern California, which is where our surrogate is, to go to OB visits and visit with her. And all of that quickly, completely changed. So there were no cross country flights and visits. Wi Fi access at the OB's office was spotty, so we couldn't always join the OB visits. And we had a scare in May of 2020 when she was going through some preterm labor, which is not uncommon in kind of a twin gestation. And so this was all so unexpected. We didn't know what to do. But, you know, thankfully, I had some of the basics, right, of, like, infection control from training as a doctor and those kind of things. And I had done so much work, too, like, in hospitals and clinics around infection control and kind of mitigating some of those, you know, some of those things in general. And so some of those basic tenants served us very well. The pediatric training actually served me quite well because, you know, I've taken care of a lot of babies and preemies and children who were born too early, who had ICU stays and all of that. So all of that was going through my head as well. And I just remember saying over and over, gosh, if we could just get past 32 weeks, you know, I think we would be doing great. And thankfully we did. We got to 37 weeks in one day, and we had to. We delivered by emergency C section at that time because our surrogate was. Was going through some elevated blood pressures and hypertension as a result of the pregnancy. So it had to be, babies had to be delivered pretty promptly. But during that course of that pandemic, it all feels like such a blur, but also so vivid, kind of at the same time that you don't want to forget the experiences of everything that we all went through kind of during that time to keep our family safe, to keep our kids safe. And thankfully, we did all of that, so. And here they are, almost four in June.

00:15:50 - Priya Krishnan
You know, that sounds like an amazing story. I actually want to bring you back to the work you're doing at Belong because you're doing such incredible work there. I would love to hear about, you know, what was your inspiration behind the mental health connector and your focus on vulnerable communities in general. While you said I shifted my focus to being the best dad, you've clearly pivoted in terms of your focus as a clinician and, you know, as the health officer at belongs. So love to hear how that happened.

00:16:23 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
So my life's work has been around vulnerable populations. I mean, I come from a vulnerable population. Well, multiple vulnerable populations. My background is, I'm Native American. My tribe is the Lumbee tribe out of North Carolina. And so healthcare for me growing up was. I distinctly remember our parents telling us that we had to be on death's doorsteps, really to go to. To see a doctor because we couldn't afford anything like that. And so that was my experience growing up. That was the experience of my family growing up.

That was the experience of our fellow tribal members growing up. And so I very vividly remember how marginalized we all felt within healthcare. Healthcare felt like something for the wealthy.

It felt like something for people who had the means and resources to be able to engage healthcare in a meaningful way. For us, it would have been more episodic and transactional. It would have been seeing someone that's a healthcare professional for an urgent need and not something for an ongoing kind of need. So for me, that was my history, that was my experience. And when my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, had a massive heart attack when I was eleven, I was eleven, and he ultimately passed away from that. And that really shaped my experience with healthcare even further.

Nowadays, something like that would be mostly avoidable. So as I went through my medical school and my training up in Boston, for me, those vulnerable populations are what has always felt near and dear to my heart.

And so each role, each job that I've had has really been kind of fixated on how do we bring the absolute best care to everybody, no matter what your background is, or what your belief system is, where you're from, or what you look like, or what you feel like.

And for me, that's been a driving force for the work that I do. And so that's ultimately brought me to belong. I've been with the company now over two years, and as the chief clinical officer. What resonated with me with belong was the work we do is varied, and it's very much focused on one of the most vulnerable populations out there, which is the dual eligible population. And these are people who are dually eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare. And so for us, that's about two thirds of our population would be above 65, and a third of our population is under 65. And those under 65, far and away, are eligible because of some sort of disability. That could be a physical disability, it could be a mental health condition that's disability as well for those people. And so we see people across all ages, and historically, the dual eligible population has really been, the way I like to phrase it is they've been overlooked and looked past in the healthcare system. So no one has wanted to do anything for these folks, hospitals, doctors offices, health plans, because I guess the bias has been that this population has historically been difficult to treat, or at least what people have thought it was, that they would be difficult to treat and that they were expensive to treat because they would have more medical conditions, more mental health conditions. And so when belong was formed and they outreached to me about the opportunity, it was, for me, it was like a light bulb. It was like a company developed specifically to address a population that has been historically shunned and marginalized.

00:20:20 - Priya Krishnan
Marginalized, right.

00:20:21 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
But that, for me, just made sense. I'm like, why didn't I think about this? Why didn't I jump into that, you know, some years ago? So for me, that was the impetus behind joining belong. And the other part of that that was so important to me is that when I'm kind of thinking about a company or an organization that I want to join, for me, it's difficult to think about joining something that doesn't align with my values and where I don't align with the mission and vision of the organization. And so with belong, we have health equity baked into our mission. So that's part of what we want to deliver with various partners, whether that's health plans, health systems, or clinician offices like doctors and nurse practitioners and physician assistants. And for me, that's very much important to me. And doing that health equity work on a daily basis is immensely rewarding for me and hopefully for those patients out there that get to be part of our programs.

00:21:22 - Paul Sullivan
You know, you're doing amazing work. But belong is a startup. As we said earlier, you know, your husband, hoped, is a therapist. So he has very set hours in which he's seeing people. Startups are notoriously fast paced, hard driving, working at all times. How have you been able to balance or find integration between being the chief clinical officer at a startup doing very important work, but also to be a dad to your boys who are, you know, still, they always need you, but still very much in that stage where they really need you.

00:21:58 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Yeah, I tell you, gosh, not that I want to spend a lot of time thinking about the pandemic or COVID, but what I will say is that those early days of COVID I think, really shaped and really, for me, brought into super intensive focus. That work life balance. For me, it was without COVID and without the pandemic. This sounds, like, really crazy to say, but would I have had as much time in those early days with my children as if this pandemic wasn't around? And that's what I keep thinking about, you know? And for me, that when you hear those ambulances, we were in Brooklyn at the time, right? And when you hear those ambulances come through on an almost hourly, multiple times in an hour basis, and you just realize that's another person with COVID coming through, that's another family that's been affected by this horrible disease. And then you realize in the kind of bubble that we were in, in our place with our kids, keeping them safe, and everything was like that. Was like, number one. That was absolute number one priority. And for me, that really helped to focus that thought. That work life balance has to be, this has to be part of everything that I do. And if I don't get this balance right, somebody's going to be unhappy with me, my job is going to be unhappy with me. My kids will be, they'll develop into maybe not being so happy with me, depending on things, but so for me, I had to make sure that one, any role that I came into, that that was paramount, that that was absolutely crucial to anything that I did. And at the time, I worked with a previous organization, Oak Street Health. Kind of a few months after the boys were born, I switched jobs and was working with Oak Street Health. And they're a primary care organization for people on Medicare, which also included those dual eligible population folks. I was doing that work with Oak Street. I did that with a previous company called Care more prior to that. And so I was able to bring that focus there. While I was opening clinics, really in the New York metropolitan area, I was opening clinics kind of all over the city, but also still maintaining that focus. Like, I got to get home to my kids. It's time for my nanny to gear up and get ready and go home, and I have to be there for the kids. That was just also important for me. And then as I was thinking about this role with belonging, what was so important for me, even during the negotiation phases and talking about joining, was that first and foremost, I'm a dad. And that's the best, most important, most joyful job of my entire existence, hands down. And that's what's so important to me. And I bring that into the role when I started that role, like having that as a focus in what I do now is apparent to everybody. So in my company and in my interactions with everybody, and we're distributed company, we have people kind of all over the country, is that this is my role as dad, first and foremost. And then I'm a husband, and then I'm a chief clinical officer. I'm a doctor after that. So knowing where my priorities are and making sure that the people I work with and they know what my priorities are, I've been quite apparent and outspoken about that. And I think that's key in this work life balance is people knowing where your priorities are and not having to guess or figure that out based on their own biases.

00:25:47 - Paul Sullivan
You've been listening to The Work-Life Equation podcast with Priya and Paul. Our guest is Doctor Ramon Jacobs-Shaw. We're going to take a brief break and we'll be right back after this.

00:26:08 – Commercial
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00:27:00 - Priya Krishnan
Welcome back to The work-Life Equation with Paul and Priya. We're here with Doctor Ramon Jacobs-Shaw and looking forward to the second half of this conversation.

00:27:09 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Same here.

00:27:10 - Priya Krishnan
So one of the questions I had for you was around the fact that you spoke about how your work has taken you both to multiple places. So you've had quite a varied range of locations that you worked at and also the fact that you've gone from a clinical practitioner now to managing diverse teams and, you know, leading a team of people. So talk to us about how both of those journeys have gone. It's quite clear that where your priorities lie. But this is quite an interesting trajectory in terms of what learnings could have been there on both of those. On both aspects, yeah.

00:27:52 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Oh, wow. So I remember, and I was just having some conversations with folks back in North Carolina about this back in October at a speech I was giving for the physicians network at UNC. But growing up, gosh, I had the joy and the pleasure and the honor of having a mentor who, at the time, Doctor Joey Bale, was the only Native American pediatrician in the state of North Carolina. And he was also the president of the American association, the Association of American Indian Physicians, or the AAIP. And so having him as a mentor in those days was also immensely helpful for shaping what I felt was my career trajectory, which is being able to help vulnerable populations like my own tribe, for example. And so that helped shape. And by the way, this is coming from where I grew up in North Carolina, being one of the poorest states with the highest crime rate, I'm sorry, poorest counties with one of the highest crime rates. And so for me, things could not have gone so well. Things could have looked very vastly different for me. Now, when I think back on that, but starting at that point, I knew my focus was on working with vulnerable populations. So that seemed to be like my. That's where my compass led. And so, following that trajectory, not everything is panned out in the direction that I thought it would have, would have gone. It's gone in a much gloriously better way than even I could have imagined all those years ago. So as a medical student, I knew that I wanted to. To what I thought at the time was come back and be a doctor in rural health. And I decided at the time that I wanted to do dual training as both a pediatrician and an internist. I wanted to be able to see people of all ages. And that's what fascinated me the most. And because I was so young and I grew up in a very rural setting, I thought, why not take the opportunity to go somewhere, have a different experience, and then bring that back? And so that's what led me to Boston. And so I did my training at Mass General Hospital, right in your backyard there, and Boston Children's Hospital, so not too shabby when it comes to reputation for hospitals and trainings. And I did that for four years. And my eyes really opened during that time as well, thinking, where could I. Where could I exert the most influence, but also things that bring me joy? And at that time was working in the hospital, very acute setting, working with people of all ages. And that's what I did right out of residency, is, came back to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked at UNC hospitals for about five years, doing both that pediatric work and that internist work, teaching residents and nursing students and students of all types at that point. And then love is what brought me to New York after that. So that was met my husband, now husband, during that time. And we came to New York and worked with those populations at NYU as well, and then took on various leadership positions as well over this time. And one of the things that became very clear to me during my time at NYU is that I see myself in kind of higher leadership positions.

And my thought being that if I wanted to be able to bring that clinical eye into the C suite, for example, and bring that clinical eye that's had the experience of being a part of a marginalized population that could be the voice for people who are voiceless and don't have a seat at the table, for me, that was so key and so important.

But I also thought, gosh, I need to. I need to probably get some more training. I know it sounds crazy, right? Like, I've done all that training before, but I need to do. I need to do more. And my thought was that I need to. I want to be a better leader. And if I'm going to be a person that wants to bring voice to the voice list to represent those folks that don't have a seat at the table, is I want to be a better leader at all of that. And so I went back to school and did an executive masters in public administration at NYU, specifically focused on organizational leadership with an eye towards diversity, equity and inclusion. And I tell you what, Priya and Paul, that experience doing.

I did an accelerated year long program in 2016, 2017 that really opened my eyes up to the potential of leadership and for folks that bring that eye towards diversity, equity, inclusion into the different spaces that we're navigating, that opened my world up, and I began to see myself as a leader that didn't need to be somewhat constrained by four walls.

And that that leadership, I think, could. Could really be leveraged anywhere. It could be in a hospital, it could be in a doctor's group, it could be in some other organization that hasn't historically been viewed in the healthcare lens. And then having that experience is then what led me to places like care, more health, doing work I had not done prior to that in a place I had not been before.

So doing what's called value based care work for vulnerable Medicare populations in southern California, for example, is what led me after the masters and after NYU. And so for me, taking a step back to think about how can I use influence and my voice to help people out who need it the most, I needed to think of how to better equip myself for being able to do that. And so doing that, masters was immensely helpful for me and very thankful that I had that experience at NYU. Wagner.

00:34:20 - Paul Sullivan
You know, Ramon, I just want to take you back for a second to the personal, because, you know, your professional career is incredibly impressive, you know, credentials, but also all the work you've done for underserved populations, you're dedicating your life, your career to that. But when you and hoped and moved from Brooklyn to Connecticut, an idea that a lot of people got in the pandemic, they said, you know, city living is great, but I got kids. I need a backyard. You had something, you know, not unique, but disturbing happen to you. And it was on the playground because, you know, what we call the company dad, your lead dad. You're what other people might call your. You're the go to parent. You're out there. And both you and hoped and are super involved with the boys. But I'll never forget the story that you told me, once you get on the playground and you're asked a question all for essentially, from what I call in suburban Connecticut, the keepers of all parenting information, would you tell that story for all you?

00:35:17 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Yes, I will. Getting completely unexpected. You never know what you're going to encounter out there, right? So in our first few weeks, the first few weeks of the move to Connecticut, we were on the playground with the boys. It was just me at the time on the playground with the boys. But leading up to that, Hopeton and I with the boys, we were in a small town, and we had been to multiple things, multiple events, multiple gatherings. And to say that we stand out as visible in a small town is an understatement. And so one of the parents, one of the moms had remembered seeing me before out and remembered seeing me with Hopeton. And she sat on the playground. We were connecting. Her kids were playing. Our kids were playing. And she was telling me that, like, wow, you're new to the area. I was like, we're brand new to the area. We're trying to get, you know, trying to know everything about the area, what to do and all of that for the kids, because that's what. That's the whole reason why we kind of came out to the area. And she said, well, she said we were new from the city as well. Like the year before. There is a mom's group on WhatsApp that we can. We'd love to add you to. And you're like a mom, so you should. You should join this group. At the time, I didn't know what to make of it because I was also managing the boys and making sure they were okay on the playground. And I remember coming back home after that, and I just remember thinking, like, gosh, there was like. It just felt so. It just felt so sad to me because, you know, here I am, like. Like being a dad and doing everything I can for the boys, only to not be recognized as a dad, you know? And I'm like, again, that's like the most joyous job role that I will ever have in my life. And it just became apparent to me that someone who can enjoy time with their kids, go to the playground, do things that are, like, joyous for all of us, you know, only to be reckoned, not. Not recognized as the dad that I am. Like, was really, you know, was really stressful to me. And I remember telling this person at some point after this was like, months after that when we ran into each other again that, you know, I'm like, no, I'm, I'm not a. Moms are amazing. Moms are absolutely amazing. But, you know, I'm a dad, and I'm a dad to these boys and everything. And so, and it didn't stir any issue with that, that particular person. But then I was able to join this, this, this what was originally a mom's group on WhatsApp. And after the, the lone gentleman on the, on the WhatsApp is, you know, also, like, being part of conversations about things. Then they did change the group to, like, a parents group. So it wasn't just a mom's group, it was a parents group to be more inclusive of, you know, what, who was on there, which was, you know, a dad who happened to be gay. And so that was, and it's such a valuable resource, like, and it's, and it makes no sense to me. There's apparently separate dads groups on Facebook and WhatsApp as well. And it's like, why can't there just be a group or multiple groups about parents? Because we're all in this together and we're all, like, doing caregiving in different ways. And it just feels so segregated needlessly. But it's been very interesting to see and be part of that dialogue, Paul, over the course of this past year and a half.

00:39:13 - Paul Sullivan
Now, you know, Ramon, as anybody knows, those groups are the keepers of all information. And so when you told me that story, I said, you've got to go back, shame this woman and push away into that group. And lo and behold, it's now your town's parent group.

00:39:27 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
And you get that information.

00:39:28 - Paul Sullivan
Like, without that information, it's hard to navigate these small towns.

00:39:32 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Oh, it is. Because you then find out, no Google search, no Facebook search or Instagram or TikTok search can, like, give you the information that sometimes is like, some of the gatekeepers of this may be folks that have either been around for a while, and it's almost like its own spoken language in a way. And then people who are newer to the group as well, that are learning things pretty fast that they wish other people would know and wouldn't have to go through maybe some of the same barriers or impediments that they went through as well. So it's been, it's been eye opening, but it's been very helpful. Like, at one point, we were, when we first moved here, we were looking for a nanny, and we didn't know where to start. Absolutely no idea. And someone in the group had suggested a nanny person, colloquially called a nanny broker. So someone local who's been doing this for decades and doesn't advertise it whatsoever, but she's connected to all of these different folks who are childcare workers throughout this kind of region that she can tap into for people's various needs. So if you need somebody part time or full time or any of that, and it was through that that no Google search showed me that and that was helpful. I still keep in touch with this person because other people that move into the area and if they need something like that, I'm like, oh, let me introduce you to misses h over here who's been doing this forever. And I keep, I keep in touch with her as well because she's just an awesome person.

00:41:13 - Priya Krishnan
Or you can ask them to go visit their local bright horizons.

00:41:16 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
There you go. That's true.

00:41:21 - Paul Sullivan
Doctor Ramon Jacobs-Shaw, thank you for being our guest today on the work Life equation podcast. We end each of these with three questions. We were talking offline that you're the only person we know who's ever gotten an a in organic chemistry. So I'm pretty sure you're going to answer all of these questions. Well, no pressure, doctor, no pressure. So the first one, in your own words, define work life balance.

00:41:50 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Work life balance. I think the essence of that is really being able to know what your priority is and then shifting and balancing everything around that priority.

00:42:03 - Priya Krishnan
Okay, so you're on the path to the a. The second question is, while you're not pivoting your career to go to these new places and figuring out how to serve, you know, underserved populations and being this amazing dad to your four year old twins, what do you do for yourself?

00:42:23 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Gosh. Music. I love all types of music. I find it soothing and calm, calming and comforting. Meditation and yoga are super important to me. I got into that right before the pandemic, actually. And it's been so wonderfully important and essential to really helping me just keep balance in general with, with everything. So those are super key for me.

00:42:54 - Paul Sullivan
And two for two so far, doctor. So, third question, what advice would you give other fathers out there who are trying to fulfill their career ambitions and be a great father and partner in their family?

00:43:15 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Gosh, be visible. Like, let people see you. Be a father and own it and be proud of it. And let people know that that's important to you. And if it is important to you, then people should know that. Whether that's people in your work life or people in your friend circle, people in your social networks, in your communities, more people need to see fathers and dads and lead dads being those crucial caregivers that are doing everything for their children as well. And then when people are able to see that, people can begin to emulate that in their own lives and then be able to say like, this is, wow, this is such a shift in the ideas of parenting and breaking down some of those glass ceilings for dads, especially lead dads as well. So be visible and show people that you enjoy this and that this is a priority for you. And then it will make its influence spread kind of around kind of throughout. So that's what I would say about that.

00:44:22 - Priya Krishnan
The trailblazer at life and a trailblazer at work. Thank you so much, Doctor Ramon. It was just an absolute pleasure speaking with you.

00:44:30 - Ramon Jacobs-Shaw
Thank you both. It's been such an absolute pleasure and thank you for spotlighting some of the things we talked about. So thank you.

00:44:37 – Commercial
I got in. When it comes to college admissions, those three words are the ultimate goal. Our podcast, getting in a college coach conversation helps you reach that goal. You'll hear from former admissions and financial aid officers on techniques to help your student navigate the admissions process. Our experts provide actionable tips, the latest trends in admissions, and a monthly q and a. Take advantage of all this insider knowledge, all from bright horizons. Visit the College Coach website at getintocollege.com. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Work-Life Equation. For more parenting resources, visit brighthorizons.com and be sure to follow us on social media.