Faculty Development Webinar: From Challenge to Opportunity: Supporting Career Journey Transitions
Virtual
Event Details
Overview
Career transitions are increasingly common across academic health professions, yet many faculty experience these moments as isolating and identity-disrupting, or many experience very limited supports. CPD educators are uniquely positioned to recognize career inflection points and design programming and interventions that can transform these periods of uncertainty into opportunities for growth, renewal, and continual contribution and meaning.
This interactive, plenary-based session brings together three unique speakers who have each experienced such transitions and have met them both with challenge and opportunity. You will learn about how they have worked with other faculty navigating career transitions across early, mid-, and later stages. You will hear lessons learned from their experiences, while also highlighting CPD-enabled interventions —practical approaches that support faculty sense-making, identity development, and agency — that can make a meaningful difference across career stages.
Participants will be invited to engage in reflection, shared dialogue and facilitated synthesis to explore how CPD educators can recognize common career challenges, apply practical interventions, and strengthen their approach to supporting faculty career journeys within their institutional contexts.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1. Recognize common career challenges and transition points experienced by faculty across different stages of academic health professions careers.
2. Describe CPD-informed approaches that support faculty reflection, identity development, and agency during career transitions.
3. Identify one concrete way to adapt or strengthen CPD programming to better support faculty career transition journeys within their own institutional contexts.
For More Information:
820 East High Street Suite ACharlottesville, Virginia 22902
United States 312-224-2522
Speakers
Betsy Williams, PhD, MPH, FSACME
Clinical Director, Professional Renewal Center®
Betsy White Williams is the Clinical Director at the Professional Renewal Center®, an assessment and treatment/remediation facility for health professionals in difficulty. She is also the Director of Continuing Education at Wales Behavioral Assessment. She is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine of the University of Kansas.
Dr. Williams has assisted medical students, residents/fellows, and practicing physicians in difficulty for over 25 years. Her research and clinical foci are in exploring issues related to professionalism lapses, poor interpersonal and communication skills, clinical competency, substance use disorders, burnout, poor professional boundaries, disruptive behavior, and concerns related to aging. Dr. Williams has led or consulted to numerous performance/quality improvement projects, both individual as well as organizational, targeting the ACGME/ABMS core competency areas of Professionalism and Interpersonal and Communication Skills. Recent projects have focused on promoting health and well-being in trainees and attendings, how to recognize and promptly address professionalism concerns, and skills to improve interpersonal and communication skills.
Yemisi Jones, MD, MEd, FAAP, FHM
Associate Professor, Hospital Medicine
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
Yemisi Jones is a pediatric hospitalist at Cincinnati Children’s and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She recently stepped down as Medical Director for Continuing Medical Education, where she worked closely with teams across the institution to design engaging, inclusive, and high impact learning experiences for clinicians. Her academic work focuses on making clinical education more effective through active learning techniques, thoughtful curriculum design, and creating psychologically safe learning environments. Dr. Jones is an award-winning educator and a mentor to learners and colleagues at all stages.
Jacob Langer, MD
Professor, Department of Surgery, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Retired Pediatric General and Thoracic Surgeon, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario
Jacob C. Langer was educated and trained at the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He did research fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco and McMaster University before becoming Assistant Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at McMaster University from 1989 to 1992, and Associate Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis from 1992 to 1999. In 1999 he returned to Toronto to become Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto, and Robert M. Filler Chair and Division Chief of General and Thoracic Surgery at the Hospital for Sick Children, a position that he held until 2012.
Dr. Langer has written over 360 papers in peer-reviewed journals, over 95 book chapters on a variety of topics, and has edited a textbook on Minimal Access Surgery in Children. He has traveled widely to operate and to lecture on diverse topics in pediatric surgery. He has been on numerous Medical Advisory Boards and journal Editorial Boards and has served on and chaired committees for multiple surgical organizations. He served as President of the Canadian Association of Paediatric Surgeons from 2012-14. Dr. Langer retired from clinical practice in June 2023 but has continued to be active as a teacher and mentor. He leads the University of Toronto Department of Surgery Academy of Senior Surgeons Experiencing Transition (ASSET) group and is involved in a number of other initiatives within the University.