145. Building a Team with NWSL’s Chief Medical Officer Cindy Chang, Part 2

145. Building a Team with NWSL’s Chief Medical Officer Cindy Chang, Part 2

 

 

Introducing Cindy Chang

Today I’m back with NWSL’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Cindy Chang with part 2 of our talk about building a team. Listen to part 1 of our conversation.

Her Career Journey

Cindy earned both her BS in zoology and her MD from The Ohio State University. She completed her residency in family medicine at UCLA before returning to Ohio State for her sports medicine fellowship. She was a head team physician at UC Berkeley for many years and currently a professor emeritus in the Departments of Orthopedic and Family and Community Medicine at UCSF. She became the first Chief Medical Officer for the National Women’s Soccer League and is working to improve athletes’ health and well-being by creating new systems and protocols within the organization.

Building A Team

Cindy has been building teams all throughout her career. Whether it was as a head team physician at Cal, coordinating medical care for student-athletes, or through organizations like AMSSM or the social mentorship group she founded in California (AWSM), or just creating a network of volleyball team to sub for when she was an intern, Cindy knows the importance of a network. Now, as the first CMO for the NWSL, she’s in a position to build up medical care teams from the ground up. She’s working with the staff of each team across the country, as well as the player’s association, all with the common goal of protecting the health and safety of the athletes.

Inside this episode:

  • Cindy shares her early aspirations to become a journalist and how she’s taken from that her love of writing and applied to other parts of her career.
  • Her first job after fellowship started with a letter she sent years before. She started this letter that began with how she wasn’t qualified for the job, but her future boss kept it around anyways. She encourages all women to apply for jobs even when they don’t feel 100% qualified.
  • Cindy encourages women to consider jobs outside of their organization. It either helps current employers see your worth or helps expose you to other ways of doing things.  
  • While she’s now the Chief Medical Officer for the National Women’s Soccer League, she’s never played soccer herself. Instead, she’s learned the game by covering it at every level and relies on colleagues to provide context for the sport’s politics. Cindy shares that you don’t need to have played a sport to cover it.
  • Cindy hopes that team physicians at every level encourage questions from the coaches they work with that may otherwise feel intimidated by the medical team’s final decision on a subject.  As the experts in a given sport, they often brought up interesting points that have made her grow as a physician.
  • She shares an incident when she was kept from wearing a hat on the sidelines that she felt most comfortable in. Cindy talks about the importance of standing up for what you believe in, whether big or small.

Resources

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