DEBORAH C. GERMAN

VICE PRESIDENT FOR HEALTH AFFAIRS, UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, ORLANDO

As one of the nation’s newest medical schools, UCF’s College of Medicine is the academic cornerstone of Medical City at Lake Nona. It includes the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, UCF Lake Nona Hospital (a partnership with HCA Healthcare) and the UCF Lake Nona Cancer Center. The college has about 1,000 employees, and German has been its dean since its founding in 2006. “My goal was to build this century’s best college of medicine and a new academic health sciences center that would become locally and nationally relevant,” she says.

EDUCATION: Boston University (BA), Harvard Medical School (MD)

DREAM ALTERNATE CAREER: I would want a career that would allow me to influence the curriculum of K-12 education. We should give every child an education that includes a basic understanding of science, business and philosophy. This would help us avoid some fundamental problems we are facing today.

MENTEE IMPACT: Years ago, when I was a resident in the ICU, I saw that my intern was struggling in the first months of the internship, I asked her to take Thanksgiving weekend off as I knew I could manage the ICU alone. Years later, we reconnected at a national meeting. We were both deans. She reminded me of that moment and said I was her model for how to be a good doctor and a good person.

FIRST JOB
“I worked as a car hop at an A&W Root Beer stand.”