96. Finding Sustainability Through Meaningful Work with Physiatrist and Founder of Sports Equity Lab Yetsa Tuakli-Wosornu

96. Finding Sustainability Through Meaningful Work with Physiatrist and Founder of Sports Equity Lab Yetsa Tuakli-Wosornu

Introducing Yetsa Tuakli-Wosornu

Today I’m talking with Physiatrist and Founder of Sports Equity Lab Yetsa Tuakli-Wosornu about finding sustainability through meaningful work.

Her Career Journey

Yetsa earned her BA in African Studies from Yale and went on to complete an MPH at Johns Hopkins. She went to medical school at Harvard and continued training for long jump with a group in Boston. Continuing to improve, she competed for the Ghanaian national team while in medical school and during her PM&R residency at the University of Maryland. She completed a fellowship in interventional spine and sports medicine at HSS. In addition to her work as a physiatrist and associate professor at University of Pittsburgh, Yesta founded and leads the Sports Equity Lab, a research group working to identify and remove inequities in sport while recognizing the capacity of sport as a tool for positive change.

Finding Sustainability Through Meaningful Work

Yetsa seems to be doing everything at once, but it hasn’t always been that way. Growing up, she could have never imagined that she’d be competing at the highest level of her sport while attending medical school. Over time, Yetsa learned that splitting her time among different pursuits actually added to her productivity rather than subtracting from it. Even more, taking time to talk deeply with her colleagues and share ideas actually added greater meaning.

Inside this episode:

  • Yetsa connects the dots between her childhood interests in becoming a veterinarian to rehabilitate animals to her current role in rehabilitative medicine. 
  • In each of her interests, from medicine to sports to the humanities, she’s driven to understand the mechanism and discover how things fit together.
  • An early research mentor taught Yetsa the importance of telling a compelling story through her research.
  • Yetsa’s pluricultural upbringing helps her identify the context for her work and determine how it serves one of the many communities she belongs to. 
  • Her determination to serve her communities through research and service comes from recognizing the privilege that she has as a trained biomedical scientist.
  • Yetsa describes the pressure she felt growing up to choose one identity, athlete or student, and how she now feels that identifying with both is best for sustainability.
  • Her connection to Paralympic sports began as an athlete on the Ghanaian national team when she discovered that her adaptive teammates received a fraction of the resources she did.
  • Her work with the Sports Equity Lab combines all of her interests. She and her multidisciplinary team are investigating ways to make sports fair, safe, and equitable for all competitors. 
  • Yetsa created a sustainable schedule that works for her, splitting her week between dedicated clinical and research time. 
  • She advises everyone to cherish and prioritize unstructured time as a way to create a sustainable, meaningful life.

Resources

Related Posts