This year’s Tana Grady-Weliky, MD Lecture on Women and Diversity in Medicine will be delivered by Michele Harper, MD, an award-winning physician, and New York Times bestselling author on March 12 from 12 pm – 1 pm at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry 1-7619 Adolph (Lower) Auditorium. Registration is required. 

Dr. Harper is a nationally recognized speaker whose work centers on individual healing and social justice. She is an advocate of personal wellness and evolution as a foundation for collective liberation. 

After her lecture, she will sign copies of her new best-selling memoir, The Beauty in Breaking, in which she shares her journey from an abusive childhood home to hectic ERs in New York City and Philadelphia as a Black female doctor—a demanding position in a profession that is still, today, overwhelmingly male, and White. Dr. Harper describes how her own healing and that of patients she encountered along the way show we are all healing from something, and how, if we make the choice to heal ourselves, we can heal each other and society at large. 

The Tana Grady-Weliky, M.D. Lecture on Women and Diversity in Medicine is an endowed lecture established in 2011 to honor Dr. Grady-Weliky, former University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry Senior Associate Dean for Education and Department of Psychiatry faculty member. It is part of the Diversity Seminar Series and is held annually.