FMC Fast Chat with Michael J. Dowling

In this episode, we chat with Northwell Health President and CEO Michael J. Dowling and how he has risen to become one of healthcare's great leaders. His newly released memoir titled After the Roof Caved In: An Immigrant's Journey from Ireland to America provides the background for today's Fast Chat.

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notable What made you sit down to say, let me tell my story?

Well, people have been advocating that I write it for many, many years. I was for quite a while pretty hesitant because I thought, you know, writing a book about your story was a little bit self-serving and a little bit egotistical. I wasn't so sure I wanted to do it, but people kept pushing me. And then my wife kept telling me, you know, why don't you start putting down on paper, at least begin writing something about the history? Because at least it would be good for your kids and for other people to understand that, you know, that everything is possible in life irrespective of the circumstance in which you grow up in, that you should never let that determine your future potential. So I started writing it with, not with an intention initially of doing a book, but actually putting some stuff on paper. Then it became for me personally therapeutic. I mean, I was able to recall the family situation. I talked to my siblings about it. And then I thought, as I got into it, I thought that if it inspires somebody to understand that you can actually overcome a lot of bad circumstances in your life and still do what you want to do, that it could be possibly inspiring for some people. It's no different, by the way, than— my story is not totally different than a lot of immigrant stories. And I think that there is an element of everybody's story in the book. So I thought it would be inspirational for people, that it might be an example that would influence somebody. And that's the basic reason. And I enjoyed doing it. Once I started, I couldn't stop.

Okay. Were your kids surprised by what they learned?

Uh, yes. I mean, uh, they've heard me talk about it, uh, and they've been to Ireland, uh, both my kids. And, uh, years ago, about 30 years ago, I actually built a model of the house in which I grew up, my original house that fell down. This is the reason for the title of the book. I actually built a model. It is at home. I still have it. I built it just as it I remember the old house that we had with thatch roof. I actually made all the furniture. And my kids, when they were young, would look at the house, they would open the door on it, and they would wonder where the light switch was. And I'm thinking, well, there was no electricity. They wanted to know what the heat source was. So because of that, they had a good understanding. And of course, visiting the area in Ireland where I grew up, they knew a little bit about it. But I don't think they fully understood the nature of the circumstance until they actually read the book.

You grew up with nothing, but yet you shared everything with the community, is the impression I'm left with.

Well, you know, it was a very rural community. It was a farming community. People actually helped one another. And especially if you were poor, which we were, you were expected to help those better off than you. It was a sense of obligation that you felt if you were poor. And you had a farmer nearby and the farmer wanted you to help, you helped. That was the expectation. Now, they would help you on occasion, of course. They may, if you wanted to borrow a horse to till the garden, they would give you the loan of a horse for the day. But it was a pretty good community overall, even though there wasn't a lot of material benefit there for us personally, for my family. But it was a pretty good community and it is exactly still the same today, except that all the homes are beautiful. Everybody has air conditioning, everybody has heat and running water and gorgeous bathrooms. And in every driveway, there is a car, a BMW, an Audi. And when I grew up, it was donkey, cart, horse, bicycle. You didn't have that many cars. And it's interesting because I'm not 150 years old. This is in the late '60s when I was in, you know, I grew up in the '60s in Ireland. So the '60s in Ireland, in that part of the country, Ireland was a third world, totally different than what it is today. The transformation over the past, you know, 50 years has absolutely been been extraordinary. And I even get shocked when I go home and I visit where I grew up. I mean, it's totally, totally different, although it looks the same, but the homes and everything are completely different.

Now, when you talk about being poor, can you explain to people what you mean by poor for us spoiled Americans who are used to having electricity and indoor plumbing?

Well, I grew up— the home we grew up in had 3 rooms, 3 small rooms. The walls were mud walls. They were about 2 feet thick, which was a problem because every time it rained, the water would seep through the walls. And, you know, I remember many times as a kid getting up and having to get a broom and sweep the water out the front door. The floor was made of hardened mud. The roof was thatch, and underneath the thatch were canvas bags that we kind of painted white so it looked like a ceiling, but it really wasn't a ceiling. And we had no bathroom, no outhouse, no electricity, no running water, no heat. Now, except for there was a big open fireplace, which was about 6, 7 feet in width and about 5 feet tall. And that's where everything was done. You sat around the fireplace. There was a bellows on the side. I don't know if anybody has seen it, but it was this wheel that you would turn that blew air up under the fireplace. And so when you got up in the morning, what you had to do was you had to get wood, you had to set the, you know, light the fire and wait for it to obviously to mature. And you had to go up the hill to get water. When you wanted to wash up, it was basically in cold water unless you actually put water on the fireplace and waited for an hour for it to heat up. And that was basically the way we grew up. And the reason for the name of the book being How the Roof Caved In, After the Roof Caved In, is that one night when we were sleeping in a storm, the whole roof of the house over our bed, the whole thing caved in on top of us. And rats used to live in the roof. I mean, this is in the book. Rats used to live in the thatch. And my brother and I used to play games with the rats. running along the canvas bags. And at nighttime, when we'd go to bed, on many, many, many occasions, we would set a rat trap next to the fireplace. And the rat traps were big metal things, steel things, because the rats would come down at night and you'd put a piece of bread next to the trap. And very often, you know, you'd hear the— it would wake you up. The trap would close and you'd hear the squeal of the rat. And you'd jump out of bed, you'd catch the rat by the tail, you'd open the front door and just toss it out. It was no big deal. I mean, today if somebody sees a spider, they run and they say, oh my God, we have a spider in the room, that's dangerous. And I look at it and I'm thinking, a spider, that's not too bad. I mean, a rat is worse, I can tell you. But when we grew up like that, the families around us were much better off. But I never knew what wealth was like. I didn't understand how well people could live until I came to the United States. And in fact, when I went to England when I was 16, then I realized, oh my God, people have beautiful places. And I remember when I was in England, the first time somebody put a— I had a phone in my hand, I didn't know what to do with the phone. So I had no idea what you put to your ear because it was completely something we had never experienced. But that was the situation with many families in Ireland in that part of the country. We were obviously at the lower rung of the ladder. But my mother always taught me and told all of us that irrespective of your circumstance, you can become successful. You can do what you want to do. You don't play victim. You don't complain about it. It is what it is. You deal with it and you move on. And so, and that's still my attitude. I mean, bad things happen to us all the time. You attack it, you hit it straight on, you deal with it, you don't complain about it, and you win over it. And that's the way we handled the COVID crisis over the last 12 months. One of these humongous circumstances that hits us, you know, you don't— I've often told people that you don't— you're not defined by what happens to you, you're defined by how you react to it. And I think that's an important lesson for everybody, especially young people these days.

Growing up the way you did, how did you imagine that you would go on to something beyond what you grew up with? Where did that come from?

Well, I was— I loved to read. And one of my favorite things as a kid was reading. And one of my favorite things today is reading. I devoured books. I loved to become more and more educated. And of course, the more educated you become, the more you realize you don't know. So it keeps you going. So my mother, despite that we had hardly anything material, of material benefit in the home, she always had books around. So I started to read Shakespeare. I read books about America. There was a famous author I loved when I was a kid named Zane Grey who wrote about the western part of the United States. I read the works of Shakespeare and of Churchill. And so I would often, as I went up to the top of the hill in front of our house, because we lived in a very picturesque area, the geography was very picturesque, I would look out over the horizon and I always wanted to imagine what was on the other side. I mean, there's something else out there. It can't be all about just this. Because we all worked at very young ages and it was tough. And you have people come back from America, tourists and neighbors and relatives who come back from America, and they'd be telling about this great United States. But then in school, even in elementary school in Ireland, we were given lessons about the United States because of the close relationship between the US an island. The US is an island and Irish people believe that they're one of the fathers of the United States, which is true to a point. And so the US was always— you had this idea, this, you know, the streets are paved with gold. This is that wonderful place for opportunity. And I knew at a very young age, I was not going to stay in that community. I was going to get out because I realized that I wanted to go to college. I dreamed of going to college. For many years, I had no clue how to get to college. I didn't even understand college. But I knew that if you went to college, it would give you some opportunities. And I knew that I would have to leave Nakhon Dewi, which is the village I grew up in. I knew that. But I think the main reason was because of the readings I did, the books that my mother made available. So she, in many ways, was the impetus for a lot of this. Her attitude was extraordinarily, unbelievably optimistic and positive despite difficult, difficult circumstance. She had a tough life, but she was never depressed as a result of that. She was positive. And I was the oldest. There were 5 of us. And then as I grew up, got a bit older, I felt an obligation that I had to do something to help out at home as well. So it was a combination. I got to help out at home. I have to look out and do something. Even if, you know, my view is that if you're going to dream, you dream big and you go for it. And you don't know what the end result is going to be. I never knew I would be doing what I'm doing now. I had no vision at that point that this would be what I would be doing. But I knew always as a kid that I would be doing something else. I was not going to be constrained by that community. And I was not going to be constrained by the poverty. In fact, Poverty to me is a motivator.

What kind of occupation did you imagine you would have?

Well, the only college to me back then, the only person I ever met that had a college degree was a teacher. So I imagined that I would become a teacher because I figured if you went to college, you became a teacher. I did not know, for example, that you could become a lawyer or that you become a business person. I had no clue. Remember, there was no counseling, there was no mentoring. None of my family had ever gone to college. They didn't even know what a college was. So I figured I would be a teacher. And the people in the community that people looked up to was teachers and the priest. And I knew I wasn't going to become a priest. I didn't have those qualifications. Teacher, yeah, that was a good possibility. That's what I thought I would end up doing. And quite interestingly, I did end up teaching. I ended up as a professor at Fordham University. And so I did reach that goal. And when I went to college, I took a degree, a bachelor's degree for the purpose of becoming a teacher. And I did a higher— I did a diploma in higher education, which in Ireland is another year you take after you get your undergraduate degree to teach, to train you to become a teacher. That was the, that was the route that I, that I followed.

So how old were you when you came to America?

I was just, uh, just 18.

Okay. What was it like to be an immigrant in the United States at that point?

Fascinating. I was enthralled by it. I was excited by it. I just thought I had struck gold when I walked around Manhattan. And I'd look at the diversity of the people. I looked at the tall buildings. I watched and I could see that there was possibilities all around. You know, no immigrant, in my belief, is that very few immigrants are pessimists. If you're an immigrant, you're an optimist. You know, like the people who went from the eastern part of the country west to the western part of the country when they opened it up, they were all optimists. So you have to be an optimist if you're an immigrant, especially first-generation immigrant, because you're opening up new possibilities, new horizons. So I was ecstatic when I was here. Now, it was a little difficult. You know, I had to fend for myself. But then again, That wasn't overly difficult. I can handle myself that way. The most difficult part of being here at the beginning was, contrary to today, we had no phones. So when I arrived, I would write a letter home. And it took at that time about 2 weeks for the letter to arrive back to my parents. And then they would write a letter back to me. Which took 2 weeks. So a month would go by before I knew that they knew that I had arrived safely.

Okay.

Whereas today, if somebody walks 3 blocks down the street, you're on the phone to find out if they're okay. So part of the difficulty was knowing that my mother especially was worried and she wasn't sure what happened to me until she got that letter. That bothered me at the beginning. But to me, you know, there's a great book written about New York. The title of the book is City of Dreams. It's the best book about New York that I've ever read. And so I was experiencing the city of dreams when I arrived.

And what kind of jobs were you doing back then to support yourself?

I worked down on the docks on the west side of Manhattan, which I did for the first couple of years. So let me clarify. When I came here, I would spend 7 months here. And I actually did my undergraduate work in Ireland, in college in Ireland, back at University College Cork. So I'd work 7 months here, go back for 6 months, then come back here and go back. I did that for 3 years. I worked down at the docks on the west side of Manhattan. And I saw my— and I was a pretty good athlete. So I played, you know, the Irish national sports. I was on the top teams in Ireland and I played with college. So that was another enticement to go back. And then after I graduated, I came back here, continued to work in the docks. Then I worked in construction. Then I worked as a plumber in plumbing companies. I cleaned out bars. I worked in a ship basin in Brooklyn. Whatever, it didn't matter. I mean, work is work. And I worked all the time. I took no time off. I had one time, and I can't find him anymore, but I actually had payslips that showed that I worked 115 hours a week.

Really?

And that was not that difficult for me because my, the pleasurable part that I found, the most pleasurable part was when I was able to send the money home to my mother every couple of weeks. So I was able to take care of myself, put money enough to pay for college, and then send money home. And so I, quite frankly, when people said to me, was it difficult? I say, no, it wasn't. Because everything is relative. Staying at home would have been difficult. There was no opportunity. Here, there's no difficulty when you have a lot of opportunity, if you're willing to take advantage of it.

Now, I'm curious though, how you managed to end up in healthcare when that's something that really wasn't available to you as a child.

No, it was, we had really no, you know, there was a doctor that would come to the house every so often, but the healthcare was not great. And the result being, for example, that all of us have lost our teeth. My brother had all his teeth pulled at the age of 13, every tooth.

Wow.

He had a toothache and the dentist basically said, well, you're gonna have an infection every place, so we might as well pull them all. So he's never had teeth. And I have another brother that has only got a few left. I, for example, have had multiple teeth pulled as a kid. Whenever you went at a distance at the dentist as a kid, they pulled the tooth and they did it without anesthesia.

Oh God.

Without Novocaine. I mean, it was like, I remember again, the dentist telling me, hold on to the chair, boy, and he just yanks it out. So for years and years after, when I left Ireland, I would not go to the dentist. I mean, the dentist for me was like the torture chamber of all times. So I did not take care of my teeth for years because I would not go to the dentist. I could not imagine that you could go to the dentist and have it be pain-free. It took many, many years for me to overcome that fear. You wanted to hit the dentist. If I hit him, I would've been happier. You couldn't have done that in the old days.

Now, but I'm wondering, the stories you tell of your mother's deafness, there's some question as to why she was deaf. Is that something that kind of spurred your interest into healthcare?

Well, back to your question about healthcare, because of my father's condition, arthritis, and because of my mother's circumstance and the lack of access, I was always interested in the health arena. and human services. I always knew I would be in that field, because that was what I was most familiar with. And when I was over here and I went to Fordham University, I did my degree in public social services and public welfare. When I went to Fordham teaching after I graduated, a number of years after I graduated, I ended up teaching healthcare courses. And then when I was recruited to go into state government with Governor Mario Cuomo, I ended up overseeing all healthcare for the state of New York. So I had oversight over mental health, alcoholism, substance abuse, physical health, et cetera. And so I became very familiar with healthcare. And I studied the healthcare systems around the country and over the world— around the world for many, many years. And then when I left government, I went into insurance company, a health insurance company run by Blue Cross Blue Shield. And then I was recruited to come to North Shore way, way back many years ago. So my whole career has been in the health arena. But I think it emanates from my family circumstance with my father and my mother.

You do talk about your incredible capacity to work. When you're cut from that cloth, that's not something you just give up or stop doing. So I'm kind of curious, what's a typical day like for you now? How many hours do you typically work?

If I do 14 hours, it's probably a good day. I leave home around, you know, 5:30 every morning, quarter to 6.

Mm-hmm.

I typically have meetings in the morning beginning around 6:30, latest 7 o'clock. And pre-COVID, I would not ever get home before 9, 9:30 at night. Maybe 8 o'clock would be early. Since COVID it's been a little bit better because we haven't had night meetings and the restaurants have closed. But my typical day is 6, right now, 6:30 in the morning till about 7:30 at night, 8 o'clock. And I don't think I've ever started work at 9 and was home at 5. I can't ever recall doing that. I just love to work and I enjoy it. And I tend to work 7 days a week. And so when people talk to me about life balance, it's work and work and I enjoy it. So, you know, I'm at home on the weekends. I try to stay home on the weekends. So I'll work at home if I need to. You know, I do all my paperwork and I write and I do a lot of reading, of course, whenever I'm Every night I go home, I actually start reading. It's my enjoyment. I love a challenge. I love to— the bigger the challenge, the better. It's interesting, even with COVID as difficult as it was, and that is true for most of my team at Notwell, we were kind of motivated by the whole thing. So how do you handle this? I mean, we didn't stress out. We didn't put our heads down and say, oh my God, look what's happening to us. We basically said, yeah, this is an interesting challenge. Let's beat it.

At the heart of it, what drives you? Is it just— is it the work itself, or is it actually your ability to help people?

I think that it's the ability to be able to make a distinctive difference in somebody's life. It's to know that. And that's the great thing about healthcare. I mean, healthcare work— people who work in healthcare are special people. But you get up in the morning and you know that by the end of the day, you've actually helped people. There are people better off because of what you did. And I tell that to staff all the time, because I meet every new employee that is hired at Northwell. We hire about 150 to 200 a week. I meet them all every Monday in this group session. And I tell them that. I said, when you go home at night, you have to be able to look in the mirror and say, Today I did something good. Today I did the right thing and I helped people get better. And there's no place better than healthcare to be able to do that. So that's what motivates me. And I am very competitive as a person, mostly competitive with myself. I am never completely satisfied with my output. As I've told many, many people, I live in a permanent state of relative unhappiness because I'm always trying to improve. And I think that everybody should. I mean, you should be pushing yourself to get better all the time. That's what makes for good results. And it works for a lot of— some people, probably that attitude doesn't work for others. But for me, it's being able to make a difference. And I enjoy what I do and I love challenge. And the bigger the challenge, the more excited I become.

You think you're a tough boss?

I don't think so. I think I set high expectations. I think I work with people well. I believe the essence of leadership is being able to inspire people to do the good, to do good. I believe that you don't light a fire under people, you light a fire in people. And that's how you get people to do it. You build trust. You keep your ego in check. You make sure you have a high level of humility. There's a great definition of leadership, which I've used many, many times, which is that leadership is about managing the present, selectively forgetting the past, and creating the future. And if you can unite around a purpose, a mission, and get people rowing in the same direction and have people who want to follow you, because of what you believe in. Because I fundamentally believe that employees don't just want to work for a company, they want to belong to something. And they want to belong to a place that has a mission that does good work. And that's healthcare. So, but am I a tough boss? I think I work very well with people. We work as a team, very collaborative. I don't believe in creating a toxic work environment. I want to— you want to have joy in work. You want to come to work— since I'm— we're all here more times than we're at home. So you've got to like being with the people you work with. You've got to enjoy work to be productive at it.

So what would you say is your greatest accomplishment? What do you take the most pride in?

I would say that being able to be good to my family, being able to— you know, we had— we ran— we went through tough times as kids. And as the book outlines, We didn't always get along, but we brought the family back together. And that to me is, at the end of the day, unbelievably important. And my current family in the US, I mean, my wife and kids, we have a very good circumstance and I'm very happy about that. And then I think if I get my work life, taking Northwell, which I spent the bulk of my career, is to create kind of a family atmosphere at work. where people enjoy being good at what they do and being committed to making a distinctive difference overall. That I think I'll be proud of. I mean, you know, I tell people all the time, you know, you travel this road just for a short period. Our life is a short journey. The question is, what do you want to leave behind?

Yeah.

And you leave behind something Positive. And it can be in many different fields, but at least do something where people can say, he did some good work. And that's what I'm proud of.

Okay. Is there any point in your life where you can point to something and say, that's when I knew I made it, or that was my definition of success and I achieved it?

I'm still searching for that point. Because, you know, the way I look at it is you have many successes in life, but you're never completely successful because you're always searching for it. The goalposts keep moving all the time. When you get to the point where you've said, I've made it, that's when complacency sets in. And then that's when you quit. You don't quit. So I don't think that you can ever say you've made it, if you've ever been totally successful because there's always more you can do. You can always stretch yourself a little bit more. You can commit a little bit more. You can help more people. But on the other hand, yeah, when somebody says, we'd like you to become CEO of Northwell, I mean, yeah, that's a good moment. When the governor asked me to head up Health and Human Services State of New York and have the benefit of working with him. Um, that was a great moment. But those are moments. Um, success is what you continually, what you continue, continually pursue.

Because your name is widely recognized, you know, that's Michael Dowling, he's a big deal. Do you feel like that? Or do you still feel like the kid from Knockaderry?

No, I still feel, you know, to me, you gotta pinch yourself ever so often. I still feel like I'm the kid from Knockaderry. And, and, uh, You know, you have, as I said a while ago, you have to have a high degree of humility. You know, I tell people, everybody puts on their pants the same way in the morning. You know, just because you're a CEO doesn't make you anything more special. And that became very obvious during COVID when I was out on the front lines walking the floors of the ICUs in every hospital. And you look at the respiratory therapist, the social worker, the security person, or the nurse or the doc, doing extraordinary things with patients. Those are extraordinary people. So sometimes I think we focus a little bit too much on the people in the C-suite and not so much on the people on the factory floor.

Mm-hmm.

And I think the good CEO keeps his eyes on the factory floor and not just only on the C-suite. I mean, yeah, you, because of the position, because of the title you've got and you have the visibility and I'm doing an event like this with you, yeah, you get a little bit more notoriety, you get, but it should not change you. You know, I do not like being around CEOs and I've been around many that think of themselves as unbelievably special and unique and extraordinary and extra smart. That's a lot of hogwash. You know, I don't buy into that personality trait at all. Just be a regular person, be decent, you know, promote a sense of decency and hope and be optimistic and be a good person, do the right thing and be kind to people. And that to me is on the road to success.

Let's pivot here a little bit to right now with pandemic and the recovery. From your perspective, where are we? How are we doing? Do you think a May 1st date for all Americans to be eligible or have access to the vaccine, is that possible?

Yes. Right now we're in a pretty good position. I'm talking about New York right now. And just let me put it in context. Back in April of 2020, you know, we had in our hospitals 3,500 COVID patients on a daily basis. We've treated about 190,000 COVID patients since the beginning. We were at the epicenter. Today, I've got about 800 COVID patients in the hospital. Most of our other business is back, 90, 95%. People are coming back to the facilities. I remember 6 months ago, people saying, will people ever come back to hospital again? I've never worried too much about that. I knew they always would. So today, Positivity rate is good, is coming down, and the numbers are good. People still have to social distance and wear masks. The danger of giving good news is that people get a little bit lazy with compliance and doing the things that they should do. The vaccine is phenomenal. And it's a scientific success that they've been able to come up with a vaccine and multiple vaccines within about a year, although the research goes back many years before that. I believe that in about 3 weeks, we will get major supplies of the vaccine. I can do up to 100,000 vaccinations a week at Northwell if I had enough vaccine. We've already vaccinated about 230,000 people.

But—

We've given out 230,000 vaccinations. But By April, we'll have enough supply. So I think that when we get into June, July, we will pretty much have done pretty much in this region, almost everybody will be vaccinated. Especially now that we have a vaccine that is a one-dose vaccine, which makes the whole everything so much easier. And I think over the summer, I think we'll gradually get better and better. The economy will start reopening. And I think when we get into the fall, we'll be in pretty good shape. As long as people continue to wear masks when appropriate. And even if you've been infected, if you've got the vaccine and you're out in a large group, wear the mask. It's not that much of an inconvenience. We've got used to it. And so yes, I think we are on the downhill of this. You can always get surprised, of course. Viruses are funny things that pop up and they surprise you. But no, I think right now we're in a pretty good place. And a point, however, I want to make that's very important, that the virus will recede into the background, the medical thing. And it'll always be with us, but we'll have a booster shot every year, et cetera. We'll manage it. The economic implications of COVID will last for years and years and years. Some industries will never open again. Some will partly open. Remote— even in our situation and in every business, the nature of work is changing because location doesn't necessarily matter anymore. Because with the new use of technology, if you're a Wall Street person, you can work out in the Hamptons and not go to Wall Street every day. We have at Northwell right now 10,000 people working at home. Before COVID we had very few working from home. So the whole technology has opened up whole sets of new possibilities. And so people don't have to live in Manhattan to work in Manhattan. They can work in Manhattan and live someplace else. And so we're not going back to pre-COVID days. We're going back to something that's different. And that's what's exciting to be in a CEO position right now is to try to reconfigure your business in a world that is dramatic, has dramatically changed. So how you can imagine what the future looks like and be a winner in that future, and not— which is different from being a winner in the world that was pre-COVID. So every CEO has to be digging deep down right now and rethinking everything they've thought before. Being creative and innovative. And that's, that's just a great place to be. And I quite frankly think that COVID has made us better people. Hopefully, uh, it changes our perspective. And I think as organizations, if we take the learnings from COVID we are going to be in a better place in the future. I think it teaches us about things that we didn't even contemplate pre-COVID. And that's what crisis does. If you think of any crisis over history, think of the innovations resulting from world wars even. During crisis, we innovate like crazy. And then we benefit from those innovations post the crisis. And so we'll come out of this. Always knew we would. And the other thing to keep in mind, people get depressed, which I can understand to an extent. But remember, we've been at it We've been in it a year. A year in the span of time is a very short period. You handle a pandemic, you start and it ends, gets close to an end a year, 15 months later. You know, it's manageable. We just got to, you know, have a kind of a very common sense perspective about this. It does inconvenience us, but you learn how to manage the inconvenience.

Okay. What would you say is the greatest lesson the pandemic taught you?

I think the greatest lesson for me is that it demonstrates our fragility. Everybody before COVID thought they were powerful and strong. The economy was doing great. We all thought we were impervious. You know, you get into that sense of that feeling of strength, organizations are doing great. And I think it's a, for me, it's an episode of caution that you can be thrown off pretty quickly by something that you can't even see, feel, or smell. And it makes me look at people around me differently, makes me look at my family differently. Kind of makes me look at life a little bit differently. Not that I'm going to slow down or, you know, take long vacations, but it demonstrates the interdependence of us all. It kind of gets you to think about what is the meaning of the word community. It also teaches us that we have to unify, and unfortunately our politics and our public discourse is very poisonous at the moment. But I would hope that COVID has taught us that we're all dependent upon one another. And if we can think about community and what it means, we can build a better future. And I think it's something we should be continuing to teach our kids, is the idea of community is important.

Okay, one last question. What's the best part of being Michael Dowling?

Oh my God, I've never been asked that question before. I think the best part of being Michael Dowling is that I was fortunate to be my mother's son.

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