Our guest today, Dr. Nadia Afridi earned her bachelors and MD in Canada and then did a residency in plastic surgery at Dalhousie University. She also earned her Executive MBA from Columbia in 2017.

Can you tell us about your background?  Where you grew up? What do you like to do for fun? [1:09]

I was born and raised in Canada, the only child of physicians who immigrated to Canada in the 1970s, so I have been surrounded by medicine my whole life. As a result, I knew a lot about medicine and decided to pursue it and did most of my training in Canada. Once I did my residency I wanted to do my fellowship training with a doctor I admired, so I moved to Nashville, TN and worked for a year there, and then did another fellowship with a non-profit, traveling all over the world doing cleft lip, cleft palate, and burn reconstruction surgery for children. That was a hard year emotionally, but so satisfying to be able to help so tangibly.

You did your undergrad and medical education including a residency in plastic surgery in Canada. You then did you one year of sub-specialty training in the U.S., focusing on reconstructive and aesthetic breast surgery. You are now a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and associate fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Was it hard professionally to move to the U.S. from Canada? [2:56]

Compared to what many people who immigrated to the United States go through it was relatively easy. Almost all of my education was already recognized when I came south of the border. So it wasn’t like my MD wasn’t recognized. I didn’t have to redo any training, but anytime you make a major move to a new place without an established network it is somewhat challenging, but it was doable. It was more the practical, business aspects as opposed to the regulatory and educational ones.

What was hardest aspect of your medical education? [4:28]

That you spend so much time before you become even remotely employable, which is a bit daunting. A lot of people get exhausted just thinking about the path ahead of you. I just tried to take it step by step, and with staging, there is initially more classroom and then progressing to a clinical environment. Another one of the hardest parts is choosing your specialty and then of course getting into it.

Let’s turn to your experience as an EMBA student. Why did you want to add an MBA to your MD? [5:50]

I had been in practice here awhile in New York and it was going relatively well. In some ways I had reached a professional plateau, and yearned to learn something new and completely different from medicine, so I decided to see if I could meet the standards of admission to Columbia. I knew for sure I would be able to extract an ROI from the MBA degree by streamlining the way I ran my business, but also I thought long term I would be ready to move onto a different phase of my career, and the skills, network, and contacts from the MBA would serve me well at that point.

CBS offers 3 NY-based EMBA options (EMBA-NY Saturday, EMBA-NY: Fri/Sat; and EMBA Americas) Why did you choose what you chose? [7:47]

I chose the Fri/Sat program and probably wouldn’t have done the program if not for that option. Every second weekend you go to school all day Friday and Saturday. What I liked about that schedule was that I knew I would hav...