In celebration of the Harvard Macy Institute’s 30th anniversary, this blog & podcast series honors the remarkable individuals who have shaped and supported our community over the years. These accomplished educators, leaders, and champions of health professions education have contributed to the institute’s enduring legacy. Through their leadership, innovation, and commitment to advancing education, they continue to inspire and guide future generations. Join us as we highlight their journeys, achievements, and reflections on the impact of HMI on their professional lives and the wider global community.
Ever since I met my preschool teacher, Rosita, at the age of three, I have aspired to be a teacher like her. I fulfilled this dream by becoming a bilingual preschool and kindergarten teacher, working with children aged 18 months to six years. As I witnessed their remarkable development, I was profoundly influenced by their curiosity, spontaneity, inquisitiveness, and joy. I cherished every moment spent with them in Montessori classrooms and playgrounds, where I quickly became fascinated by human development and the opportunity to nurture growth through teaching and learning.
Driven by this fascination, I embarked on the study of psychopedagogy to explore how humans learn and develop throughout their lifetimes, using a neuro-psycho-social-developmental and pedagogical approach to learning. This extraordinary interdisciplinary field can be applied in any setting where human learning occurs, whether at the individual, group, or institutional level, including schools, hospitals, and organizations.
With this degree, I began working in the interdisciplinary clinics department of a leading children’s hospitals in Argentina and Latin America. I collaborated with interdisciplinary teams of professionals in managing and treating patients with developmental chronic diseases, ranging from attention disorders to hypothyroidism to Fragile X syndrome. My role involved assessing the cognitive and learning capabilities of these patients and devising strategies to maximize their learning and growth opportunities. Concurrently, I engaged in vocational orientation with adolescents to expand my clinical work.
Subsequently, I was approached by the newly established School of Biomedical Sciences at Austral University in Buenos Aires Province, which comprises a medical school and a nursing school, to assist in reviewing their admissions process, including the approach to admission interviews. This experience introduced me to the world of health sciences education, which quickly captivated my interest and became my professional focus. I joined the school’s educational committee as an educational consultant, contributing to the promotion of teaching, learning, and educational scholarship.
However, my intellectual curiosity about education in the health professions continued to grow, and I sought to address the many questions that arose from existing literature and my daily practice. At this juncture, my first and cherished medical education mentor, Dr. Angel Centeno—who was the director of the educational committee at Austral School of Biomedical Sciences and a Harvard Macy Institute (HMI) scholar from the Program for Educators in Health Professions—invited me to visit the HMI program with him as he returned as a faculty member. With the support of Elizabeth Armstrong, the director of HMI at that time, I had the privilege of participating in plenary and small group sessions, and meeting Robert Kegan, the program’s co-director. Today, I am honored to be writing this blog as a proud faculty member of the HMI Program for Educators in Health Professions.
Following my visit to the program in 1999, I completed an EdM (2000–2001) and an EdD (2002–2007) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, under the guidance of Bob Kegan as my doctoral advisor. During this time, I worked as an educational and research assistant in the Office of Educational Development at Harvard Medical School, under Liz Armstrong’s leadership and mentorship. I also had the opportunity to work alongside and be mentored by another distinguished health sciences educator, Janet Hafler, currently a professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine.
Although I was initially expected to return to my home country after completing my doctoral program, Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM) offered me a position as the coordinator of their new curriculum, with a faculty appointment. I subsequently took charge of the school’s faculty development and educational scholarship initiatives. As an immigrant from a minoritized group, I will always be grateful to TUSM for providing me with a profound sense of belonging. I owe special thanks to Mary Lee and Scott Epstein for their inspiring mentorship and sponsorship during my time at TUSM. Throughout this period, I also continued to serve as a faculty member in the HMI Program for Educators in Health Professions.
With every HMI faculty meeting, project group discussion, and general assembly, I continue to be enlightened and intellectually stimulated while witnessing the growth of dedicated educational scholars and being part of an extraordinary global community. The HMI Program for Educators in Health Professions holds a special place in my heart, as it has allowed me to realize professional aspirations and dreams, I could never have imagined.
I am forever grateful, first and foremost, to my family, who have always believed in me more than I believed in myself, and who supported me in pursuing my academic dreams. I am also deeply thankful to my mentors, especially Elizabeth Armstrong and the remarkable HMI community, for nurturing my deepest passion: utilizing learning, teaching, and scholarship to enhance both my own and others’ lifelong development while contributing to the education of competent and virtuous health sciences professionals.
Maria A Blanco, EdD
