Between excursions to the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, and Ha Long Bay, students on the healthcare leadership study abroad went off the beaten path to visit hospitals and learn from healthcare administrators. As students traversed India and Southeast Asia, they found characteristics of Christlike leadership in professionals of different faiths.
The study abroad was organized by the Healthcare Leadership Collaborative and the Whitmore Global Business Center at the BYU Marriott School of Business, with assistance from the BYU Kennedy Center, and included stops in India, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. The goal was to help students learn about healthcare leadership, but for exercise science student Kendall Trautman, lessons about leadership began before she even boarded a plane.
Looking for opportunities to get involved in healthcare, Trautman met with Bill Tayler—director of the Healthcare Leadership Collaborative and Robert J. Smith Professor. Trautman left his office, resolved to go on the study abroad Tayler would be leading alongside Tad Morley, an adjunct professor of healthcare leadership.
“I felt like I was seen. I didn’t even know Professor Tayler, but he was willing to help a stranger even though he was super busy,” Trautman says. “That’s what I think a true leader is: someone who takes time to create more leaders.”
Trautman saw more examples of leadership when she arrived in India after two full days of traveling. At the Indian Institute of Science, Trautman was inspired by the institute’s model of training teachers in the community. “If they can inspire the teachers, the teachers will take that same passion and knowledge and transfer it to the students,” Trautman says. “That was a good example for me to be humble as a leader and make sure I’m putting my energy into developing more leaders.”
Humility was a key leadership aspect that also stood out to Emily Wolfley, an entrepreneurial management student who went on the study abroad. At Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, Wolfley learned that all hospital staff—surgeons and nurses alike—volunteer their time once a month to clean the hospital together. “Is that not just the most beautiful sign of humility?” Wolfley reflects.
She saw the same humility-oriented service at Narayana Health hospital in Bangalore, India, where professionals work to prevent poverty from limiting access to healthcare by reducing administrative costs. “The coolest thing that I saw across all these leaders I met is that their work was not about the money—it was about helping people,” she says.
In Cambodia, students met with His Excellency Professor Chheang Ra, Cambodia’s minister of health, to learn about the intersection of healthcare and government. “He was looking to learn from us, and we were looking to learn from him,” Wolfley says. “He spoke to us in our language and answered our questions with so much wisdom.”
Chheang’s insight that leaders must delegate is what stood out to business management student Kate Sawaya. “He said that one leader cannot do everything, and that it’s important as a leader to see the potential in others and include them in your goals.”
Such delegating happened in several of the countries they visited, Sawaya says, pointing to volunteers who were trained and mobilized to facilitate healthcare services in remote villages. Sawaya couldn’t always speak with these volunteers or their patients as she accompanied home visits as part of the study abroad itinerary. But she says she gained a deeper understanding of ministering to individuals as she communicated through translators, smiles, and gestures. “It was cool to have a personal connection and to realize language barriers aren’t actually barriers to connection.”
While many of the 21 participating students will apply what they’ve learned back home in the United States, the location of the study abroad was especially significant for Gabriel Abello, a recent graduate of the strategy program at BYU Marriott. “I’d love to serve in a global capacity, especially in the Asia-Pacific region,” says Abello, who feels inspired by his Filipino and Fiji-Indian heritage and his experience serving a church mission in India.
Abello says he went on the trip eager to learn about approaches to transforming healthcare through Christlike leadership in places with unique needs. “India has nearly 1.5 billion people—how do you serve the one?” he says.
“Healthcare administrators can't know everybody and they can't interview everybody, so they rely on these trustworthy health connectors,” Abello explains. He says he learned that educating others, leaning on a clear purpose, and delegating responsibilities allows leaders to be effective, even when working with large populations.
Above all, Abello and his peers say they found that a strong motivation is vital to Christlike leadership. “At the end of the day, what we discovered on this trip is that Christ is our purpose,” Abello says. “I believe that when we put God first in our lives, we’re able to serve the best way that we can.”