Leadership Course Jan 2019

The Pan-American Curso de Liderazgo (leadership course) participants attended a work session in San Francisco, January 18-21, 2019. PAAO Curso participants joined with the American Academy of Ophthalmology Leadership Development Program (AAO LDP) and European Society of Ophthalmology Leadership Development Program (EuLDP) participants for interactive work sessions including ethics and professionalism, advocacy, team building, media relations, effective meetings and presentations.

Curso participants also had the opportunity to present an update on their Curso project. Projects should be of benefit to the national society or sub-specialty society that nominated the participant.

Mr. David Batstone, founder and president of global anti-slavery organization Not For Sale, and founder and managing partner of Just Business, an international investment group that incubates social enterprises, got the weekend started with his talk on Accepting Leadership Responsibility and Negotiating Your Leadership Journey.

Ms. Marsheila DeVan, communication specialist concentrating on physician speaker development, interpersonal skills improvement, cultural diversity training, leadership, meeting moderation, curriculum development and one-to-one coaching, anchored the weekend presentations. One participant remarked “I’ve been giving presentations for years and thought I was pretty good at it. Now I know there is so much I don’t know.”

In addition to the formal work session, participants had several opportunities to network informally: a short reception each night, dinner with the Curso group or with the other groups, a bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge, walking tour of the Embarcadero area of San Francisco, as well as a stop at Beach Blanket Babylon, “San Francisco’s hilarious pop culture musical review”.