Awakened Anesthetist

Part 1 of 2. Building a Diverse Future in the CAA Profession ft. DEI AAAA Committee Chair, Arielle Knafel-Bellian, CAA

• Mary Jeanne, Certified Anesthesiologist Assistant • Season 4 • Episode 59

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In this episode, the 2024 AAAA DEI Committee chair, Arielle, and I, dive into the goals and selection process for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion AAAA scholarship. This scholarship is designed to create a more inclusive CAA community by valuing each applicant's unique story. With criteria that emphasize student involvement and contributions to diversity, the scholarship seeks to ensure representation and prevent bias. 
Consider this your sneak peek into the upcoming PROCESS episode featuring the 2024 DEI scholarship winners, Ellen and Tekiah. Don't miss this opportunity to be inspired by Arielle's impactful work and continue supporting diversity within the anesthesia field.
 

Key Acronyms

  • DEI- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
  • AAAA- American Academy of Anesthesiologist Assistants
  • CAA- Certified Anesthesiologist Assistants
  • SAA- Student Anesthesiologist Assistant

Key Links

  • Email the 2024 DEI Committee Chair to get involved aknafel@mcw.edu
  • Join the AAAA (must be AAAA member to apply for DEI scholarship)
  • DONATE NOW DEI Scholarship - AAAA
  • LEARN MORE DEI Scholarship Requirements
  • APPLY for the DEI Scholarship 2025 (application open thru mid December 2024)



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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Awakened Anesthetist podcast, the first podcast to highlight the CAA experience. I'm your host, Mary Jean, and I've been a certified anesthesiologist assistant for close to two decades. Throughout my journey and struggles, I've searched for guidance that includes my unique perspective as a CAA, At one of my lowest one. I encourage you to stick around and experience the power of being in a community filled with voices who sound like yours, sharing experiences you never believed possible. I know you will find yourself here at the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast. Welcome in.

Speaker 1:

Hello Awakened Anesthetist community. This is your host, mary jean. A little something different here. I actually meant for this bit with ariel, who you're about to meet. She is the current dei quad a committee chair.

Speaker 1:

I meant for this to be a precursor, like a little intro, into what the DEI committee is and the DEI scholarship that that committee has created and funds and gives out every year. But, like everyone else, arielle has her own story and she is more than just the DEI committee chair, and I couldn't help but ask her a couple more questions and it turned into an episode that I think is really worth highlighting the work that Ariel does as the DEI committee chair and how she got involved as a student and then sort of moved up through the ranks, and she also shed some light on the history of the DEI scholarship, as Ariel was the initial winner in 2020 of that first ever scholarship and now she is on the committee that awards future scholarships. So I really wanted to give Arielle the time that she deserves. She's done so much great work with this DEI subcommittee and for the Quad A. So consider Arielle's episode a little precursor to the episode that releases in a couple days where I interview the 2024 DEI scholarship winners, two of them.

Speaker 1:

Their names are Ellen and Takiyah, and we get into, of course, their full process story, but I just wanted to highlight the work of Ariel, because Ellen and Takiyah's story wouldn't have been possible without Ariel's, and so I really wanted you all to meet her. I hope you enjoy this episode and tune in in two days, if you're listening in real time, to hear more from the 2024 DEI scholarship winners. All right, let's get on to the episode. Welcome everyone to the Awakened Anesthetist. Welcome, ariel, I'm so happy to have you here and to shed some light on the DEI scholarship and committee, so thanks for being here.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

You are so welcome. I would love for you to start off with some of your cultural background, your upbringing, and then we can get into how you found out about the CAA profession.

Speaker 2:

Sure, my name is Arielle Kinney-Fullbellion. I am a CAA. I practice in Milwaukee, I started. So me personally, I am biracial, so my dad is African-American or black and then my mom is white. So I feel as though, like I already have a pretty good mix in the world, having a good idea of different aspects of diversity, which helped. And then I grew up in California, which I think is like the biggest cultural salad bowl in the United States, so I had a good idea of diversity in that sense too. But it helps to have an outside perspective. So I've lived in a bunch of different places.

Speaker 2:

I have worn a lot of hats in my day I played collegiate volleyball, so I've been an athlete. I was Miss Tennessee, so I've done pageants oh my goodness. Yeah, I did nuclear medicine. I was a nuclear medicine engineer before, so I have like an engineer background. And then now I'm in anesthesia, so I have worn a lot of hats. Wow, yeah, helps tremendously, I think, in just having a good understanding, especially with our profession. We're trying to grow, we're trying to get our stamps out there, we're trying to introduce ourselves to a lot of different people who don't have the same professional background, personal background. So it's been very helpful. Sometimes I thought it was a little hard to find a seat in the room when you don't necessarily have one block that you specifically tie into, but now I look at it in a completely different way. It's nice to be able to hold conversations with different people with different aspects of your life.

Speaker 1:

How did you hear about the profession? What point along your journey?

Speaker 2:

So I did my undergrad and then I did my postdoctoral at Indiana University in Indianapolis, doctorate at Indiana University in Indianapolis and they were just starting to come out with their program, their AA program, there. So I did nuclear medicine engineering there and I actually went on to work in Knoxville and I just kept in contact with the school and that was the very first time that I had heard of the profession at all. So kept in contact. They finished creating their program, they had their initial class and then I thought you know, I think this is really something I'm interested in, so did my research and then it kind of just fell into my lap. I had no idea it was happening. And then that's how I got introduced, dr Nakata, there at Indiana University.

Speaker 1:

Very cool. What class were you? Were you the second or third class?

Speaker 2:

I actually went to MCW. I ended up going to MCW. Oh, really so you didn't go to Indiana. I didn't go to Indiana. I thought you know I've been here. I know a lot of people at Indiana. Again, the more hats you wear, the more people you know. So I just kind of wanted to broaden my horizon, especially with anesthesia being kind of a closed net, very small community, so the more you know, the more people you know. So I ended up going to MCW and I started in 2020.

Speaker 1:

And so you graduated in last year 2023? 2022. 2022. Okay, gotcha. In last year 2023, 2022, 2022, okay, gotcha, yeah. So you started school in 2020 and you are now the current chair of the DEI committee. So give us a little bit of background on that progression, on when you were first introduced to the scholarship yeah, it's actually a very interesting one.

Speaker 2:

Um, so they came out with the first scholarship in 2020. And at that time I think we only did they only did two, so it was myself and another person who ended up winning. We didn't have a lot of traction on it. There wasn't a lot of publicity, no one knew because it was the very first time. So I actually again stumbled upon it. I was in a meeting for the quad A and students trying to get more involved and then they kind of in passing, mentioned it. And then I saw, and then they finally published it on the website and then I applied, went through the normal process of applying, doing the application, waiting.

Speaker 2:

You have to do a personal statement and kind of work with your program director, and the program director writes you a letter of recommendation. And at the time my program director was like oh well, you're interested in something like this. You should just reach out to them and see if there's anything you can do. Obviously, you're an applicant, so there probably won't be a lot that you'll be able to do in the meantime while you're waiting, but it's something that you can at least dip your toe in. So that's what I ended up doing.

Speaker 2:

I reached out and I said hey, thank you for having the scholarship. It's going to be tremendous. Help Like school is very expensive, especially when you're like at a private institute. But I reached out and they were excited to talk to me. They said we'll let you know after the results come out and who wins. I ended up being a winner, which was very exciting. So then I just worked with them and I sat on the board for two years while I was a student and I was the student co-chair and then, once I graduated, he kind of just gave me the reins.

Speaker 1:

Really interesting and awesome for all the students who are listening and want to get more involved. There are so many new opportunities coming up through the Quad A A lot. Yes, it's an exciting time to be motivated and to also create your own path, so congrats to you for doing that, yeah you are.

Speaker 1:

You're welcome. You're currently the DEI chair and that means that you are on the selection committee for this scholarship, for the DEI scholarship. Can you tell us a little bit about the criteria that the selection committee for this scholarship, for the DEI scholarship? Can you tell us a little bit about the criteria that the selection committee is looking for for possible recipients?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so overall we will look at your involvement. So obviously you want to make sure that you're a student. You're going to be an anesthesia student. You can be a current student, you can be coming in. We'll ask that you have a letter of recommendation, either from a program chair, if you are already in the program, or a program director, if that's the title that they go by, or if you're just coming in and you're matriculating into the class. Then you can have anyone who has like an academic or a personal understanding of your character and your morals. And then after that we do look at GPA.

Speaker 2:

We have a minimum GPA requirement and then we really overall, we have a big picture, holistic approach to this, because everyone is going to have such a drastically different story and a drastically different application. And so we'll have you write a personal statement, give us a little bit more about you, and then we'll ask about your extracurriculars and what you've done in anesthesia or just in the aspect of diversifying yourself or your community or the anesthesia community. Everything is completely anonymous. So our admin, jacob, does a really amazing job here. He works very hard on all of these scholarships, especially with the more that people know about, the more we get. So he has a big job of anonymizing all of these applicants, but we think it's extremely important. I work at MCW. I have firsthand experience. I'm precepting some of these students. I don't want to have any type of bias on any of them, so I think that's a very, very important aspect of what we do for the DEI scholarship.

Speaker 1:

Very good. Can you talk a little bit about the goals of the DEI scholarship, like what is it trying to achieve or just the committee in general?

Speaker 2:

The goal is overall just to diversify our profession, to shed light on the diversity that already exists and to give us a little bit us on the DEI side, not the applicant side of what we're missing or what we could do to kind of create this well-rounded profession of ours. Um, I think that the students and the applicants directly reflect those that are out there right now in the community. As we grow in profession and as we expand to different states and different types of communities. I think that's just going to boom and expand. So right now, that's our overall goal. We want people to feel like, when they look at this profession, when they go into these hospitals or their clinics or their outside communities, that this person looks like me, that I'm not just looking at all the people on the website and I'm like, oh well, no one looks like me for that picture. You know, we want everyone to feel like they have a place, they have a voice and that they're accepted. So that's really what the main goal is.

Speaker 1:

Yes, this is like the story of the life of a CAA. Is that progress to make? The changes that we know are best and know our essay are so dang slow, yeah, which is why it's hard to. I think our volunteer hierarchy can sometimes be burned out because there is such incremental growth. But that also means we need so many more volunteers to be interested and excited about lending their bit of help, because over the long haul this does make a huge difference and we've seen that play out in other types of legislation for our profession. So anyone out there listening who is at all interested in diversity, equity and inclusion, we have a committee and we have the committee chair, ariel. I'll leave her email in the show notes so that you can reach out to her and to them. And then, if there are any current AA students or students who have been accepted and are about to start, how do they apply for the scholarship?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's actually very easy. It used to be a lot more complicated, yeah. So yeah, now they'll just go to the anesthetistorg or the Quad A website and we'll go to about, the about category, and it'll receive a drop down list and then from that drop down list they'll be able to select diversity, scholarship, and that will take them directly to the link that they'll be able to click to start to submit their application.

Speaker 1:

And they have through the middle of December 2024 to apply to receive the scholarship in. Is it maybe March of 2025?

Speaker 2:

it comes out Around that timeline, yep, so we'll do it for the following semester, and then we'll reach out to you. And then now which I really love it's like one of my favorite things is, we will send the winners their obviously like congratulations, you won. And then we'll send them a little bio, they'll send it back to us and then we'll get to publish it on the website. We'll get to publish it on the website, we'll get to publish it on Instagram, so that the people that we fell in love with and we thought were great and deserve the scholarship now we get to share with the world and the world gets to see how great these candidates are too.

Speaker 1:

And then I jump in there. I'm like great, Let me have them.

Speaker 2:

Can I have them, Can I borrow them?

Speaker 1:

And I'm like yeah, take them, they deserve it. Yeah, I'm so excited to talk to Ellen and Takiyah here. In just a few more moments I'm going to leave a link, also in the show notes, for current CAAs or CAA adjacent people who are listening to donate correct To the DEI scholarship Fund. It's money that goes only to that fund when you donate Very specifically. It's not used for anything else and the scholarships are pulled directly from that, correct, correct.

Speaker 2:

Yep. The more people that know about it, the more people that know there is a distinct link that they can give directly to the diversity scholarship, the more money that we can give to these students and the more help that we can do. So I highly encourage all CAAs to A donate and B share. Sometimes, even if you can't donate, say it's a little, you're strapped or you just feel like I can't give, the share button does so much more. You'll see so many more people, people who are not even CAAs. I've had donate to the scholarship. So just sharing and getting the word out there is half the battle.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, amazing. Well, I'm happy to help with that push. So wonderful. Thank you so much for being on. Thank you for having me. You are so welcome. My final question is sort of the focus of season four and I'm springing this on you. I forgot to tell you I wanted to ask you this, but it's about how would you classify being a healthy and thriving CAA personal health, having an education, keeping yourself well-rounded and understanding, and then kind of giving back.

Speaker 2:

One of my love languages is I like to give, I'm a giver. So that's how I feel fulfilled, so how I can give back to my profession or how I can give back to the students that I'm precepting, that sort of thing. So I think that that cuts into it a lot.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you so much for being here and I'm just that goes into it a lot. Yeah, I'm just thank you so much for being here and I'm just so supportive of all the work you're doing and I see I see you in the background doing it because, man, we need more people like you. So, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I hope you found that episode helpful, especially if you are planning on applying to the DEI scholarship for 2025 or beyond. I will include all the links that Ariel mentioned in the show notes, as well as some common terms, so that everyone can be on a level playing field here when we're talking about DEI and this scholarship that's available. What else? I hope you all tune in in two days to hear the 2024 scholarship winners talk about their experience. We get into some really important topics, some hard conversations, and I think it's a really valuable conversation that everyone in this CAA community can benefit from. So tune in in two days to hear that can follow me on instagram at awakened anesthetist for some more behind the scenes. Also, in the link in bio on instagram, I will have an easy way to donate to the dei scholarship and, of course, you can subscribe to my newsletter. You'll find a link to that in the show notes. You can join me once a month for Mindful Connections, which is something I'm offering during season four of Awaken Anestis podcast. There's more information on that in the show notes as well. I think that's all I can tell you. Rate and review this podcast if you love it, and then, most importantly, share this with someone in your CAA community right now. Tell them why they love it and let's really blow up the donations and fundraising for the DEI Scholarship 2025.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's talk soon, y'all Having this one. Have them on the podcast. Have them on. We love it. What's your son's name? Cozy, cozy, hi, cozy, hi, cozy. You're on a podcast. Say hi, hi, hi. We will definitely keep that in. Okay, I'll press stop record. Okay, cozy, mommy's done.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Mary Jeanne Roberts, CAA

Host