From the President’s Desk

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The next step on the leadership path is to become a committee vice chair. Serving as a vice chair is the best way to make yourself visible as a potential leader within the CAP. Those are the people most likely to be chosen as committee chairs and council members and to eventually become successful candidates for election as Board members. That’s why we implemented another change to make the selection of vice chairs more transparent. Committee chairs now have an open discussion with their committee members, laying out the role and responsibilities of the vice chair and welcoming all members who are interested to throw their hat in the ring. With this new approach, we are finding that women and minority members are increasingly being selected as vice chairs.

I believe we have already seen significant evidence that we are achieving our goals. My predecessor, Emily Volk, MD, MBA, was just the second female CAP president in our 77-year history. And our newest president-elect is Qihui Jim Zhai, MD, who will become the first international medical graduate and first Chinese-American to lead the CAP.

Within the CAP organization, our staff has also embraced initiatives to boost diversity and inclusivity. Those efforts are being led by CAP director for DEI Terri Dickinson-Creasey, who joined us in early 2022 and is already making a big difference for the team. So far, internal programs have focused on the workforce, where the goal is to attract and retain underrepresented talent and give employees opportunities to further develop their skills, and on the workplace, ensuring that the CAP is a healthy and fulfilling place for all employees, irrespective of their background or identity. What has impressed me most about these initiatives is that they are truly enterprisewide, including all CAP team members and setting the organization up for long-term, sustainable change. Terri is helping the CAP staff to broaden their horizons beyond their own cultural experiences and expand traditional ideas about diversity to ensure that everyone feels a part of the initiative. That’s reflected in the popularity of employee resource groups, such as the newest one to support employees with disabilities.

There is one simple step all CAP members can take now to help us measure the progress of our DE&I efforts. In the past, the only demographic data collected about members was gender, and that is how we know, for instance, there are more women than men among our youngest members. Now, the CAP has added optional fields to our online member profiles to collect more demographic data. If you are willing to add your ethnicity, place of birth, and other information to your profile, that would give us greater ability to assess diversity on our committees and councils and in other groups. Ultimately, having better data will help the CAP complete its much-needed journey toward full diversity.

Dr. Karcher welcomes communication from CAP members. Write to him at president@cap.org.