Leadership

The best coping mechanism? Action. | Leadership Lessons

May 25, 2021  • Aspen Global Leadership Network

Megan Ranney (Health Innovators Fellow), an emergency room physician based in Rhode Island, felt the impacts of COVID on patients and health care workers up close. When every day presents a new crisis, how do you cope? Megan says: take action.

In response to the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) across the U.S., Megan co-founded Get Us PPE – a non-profit organization that has now distributed more than 13 million pieces of PPE to frontline workers.

“We created hope for health care professionals who were running out of PPE, but we also created hope for the volunteers who were a part of the organization… it was a sense of something you could do in the face of total loss of control.”

As the pandemic wore on, Megan learned to “ride the wave of crises,” — sharpening her clear communications skills to fight misinformation and seizing opportunities to enable parts of her team to step up alongside her to lead. In episode five of #LeadershipLessons, she shares how she turned one of the most challenging times in her life and career into a year defined by impact.


Megan Ranney, MD, MPH, is a practicing emergency physician and researcher focusing on the intersection between digital health, violence prevention, and public health. She is the founding director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health, the chief research officer for the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine (AFFIRM), the country’s only non-profit committed to reducing firearm injury through the public health approach, and a founding partner of GetUsPPE.org, which matches donors to health systems in need of protective equipment. She is a Fellow in Class V of the Aspen Institute’s Health Innovators Fellowship.

The Aspen Institute’s Health Innovators Fellowship’s mission is to develop a community of energized, values-driven leaders committed to finding viable solutions to confront U.S. health care’s problems.


Leadership Lessons – a Video Series from the Aspen Global Leadership Network

The impacts of COVID-19 continue to challenge our communities. However, through these challenges, there’s a lot to be learned. In “Leadership Lessons” hear from leaders who have stepped up in new ways and remained steadfast in their values through this crisis. How did they make the tough decisions? How have they changed as leaders? Tune in and gain top insights from values-driven leaders – Fellows in the Aspen Global Leadership Network – who are battling trade-offs, creating rapid responses to community needs, sharpening new skills, and more.

New episodes are released Tuesdays and Thursdays on the AGLN’s social media handles. Follow along on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to watch in real-time.