Pelham Memorial High School’s Women’s Empowerment Club recently hosted a panel featuring women who have forged career paths in medicine and health care. The panel, which was held on March 9 at the Pelham Picture House, drew about 15 students who showed up to learn more about careers in those fields and the challenges facing women in medicine.
The “Women in Medicine” panel included Alexandra Dziedzic, a creative arts therapist at the Vida Guidance Center in the Bronx; Sunetra Rangraj, the managing editor of culinary initiatives and programming at Broome Street Academy; Dr. Kelly Crotty, chief of primary care at VA New York Harbor Healthcare; Melissa Rooney, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Montefiore Health System; Lucy Kappel, the head of oncology business development at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals; and Dr. Danielle Magaldi, a private psychiatrist.
These women all had different paths that led them to the health field. In some cases, the career path was linear. For Dziedzic, art has always been important to her. After visiting a holocaust museum and seeing an image of a survivor making art with kids to help them through their experience in internment camps, she felt inspired to become a psychotherapist and similarly help patients through creative art-making.
Rooney had always liked science and kids, and after realizing during medical school that pediatrics didn’t resonate with her as much as psychiatry she decided to pursue a career in child psychiatry. Kappel received an undergraduate degree in biology, and worked at Sloan Kettering Hospital, earning her PhD. She then got an internship to test medical drugs.
For the other women, their careers path were anything but straight. Crotty earned her undergraduate degree in political science at Georgetown University and briefly worked on Capitol Hill. Despite the heady experience of working in the nation’s capital, Crotty admired her sister, who had chosen to become a nurse. Crotty left her old life, applied to medical school and completed her residency at New York University.
Rangraj got a degree in business administration at Carnegie Mellon, specializing in marketing. For six years, she worked in business planning for fashion brands Ralph Lauren and Anne Taylor. But she was always interested in medicine, as her father was a surgeon, so she went to Hunter College and got a degree in nutrition and food science.
Magaldi always knew she wanted to be a psychologist, but because it wasn’t one of the top 10 paying careers in healthcare, her parents didn’t approve, so she went into occupational therapy. But she continued to chase her dream and eventually earned a PhD in psychology from Fordham University.
Despite their diverse backgrounds, the women shared a common worry about the impact of artificial intelligence, and technology in general, on the fields of medicine and healthcare. Dziedzic spoke about how telehealth became popular during the Covid pandemic. Although telehealth allowed doctors and psychologists to reach patients living in more remote areas, patients need in-person meetings, she said. Rangraj said she was concerned about a growing trend among young people to use of social media and online apps, as well as AI, as tools for self-diagnosis.
Several of the panelists expressed concern about the future of health care under the Trump Administration. Crotty’s employer, Veterans Affairs New York Harbor Health, is managed by the federal government. She said that in the first few months of the administration, when Elon Musk ran DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency), she and her colleagues had to submit five bullet points each week listing what they did at work and why it mattered. “It was very demoralizing,” she said. Additionally, she noted, the VA used to provide abortion services to veterans or their family members, a practice that the Trump Administration ended in December, except in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.
Dziedzcic said that many of her patients were scared to go to appointments, since she’s located in an area that is frequently visited by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Kappel noted that the National Institute of Health, or NIH, used to receive $40 billion federal funding. Now, NIH gets $20 billion.
The panelists also mentioned examples of discrimination against women in the fields of medicine and health care. For example, psychology used to be a male-dominated field, but is now mostly female. But alongside the dominance in the field is an unfortunate side effect: the average salary of psychologists is now lower, adjusted over time, than what it was when men populated the field.
Despite the increase in female physicians over the last two decades, there are still hurdles for women who are doctors. Crotty stated that at the VA, she wouldn’t get invited to certain meetings because she was a woman. In spite of this, she used her niche-area expertise and experience to open doors that were previously closed.
The panel ended with inspiring advice from the women. “If you love it and you’re passionate about it, it is worth it,” Rooney said. “But go into it with your eyes open. Get exposed to it.”
Charlotte Cohn and Thiri Tun, co-presidents of the Women’s Empowerment Club at Pelham Memorial High School, described the panel as a success. “I always love getting to hear about various women’s experiences in different areas of the workforce,” Cohn said. “It’s a great way for women of all ages to connect and learn from each other.”
“The Panel was an amazing opportunity,” said Tun.
This was club’s third annual panel. The Junior League of Pelham helps organize the club’s panels, through advertising and donations. This year, the club partnered with the PMHS Breast Cancer Awareness club and raised $200 through a bake sale.
