In the fourth episode of the series, Benjamin Barankin, MD, interviews Tina Alster, MD, FAAD, about her life outside of dermatology, including her favorite places to travel, where she would move if she wasn't in Washington, DC, and some of her inspirational quotes. Listen to what she has to offer!
Dr Barankin is a dermatologist in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is author-editor of 7 books in dermatology and is widely published in the dermatology and humanities literature.
Dr Alster is director of the Washington Institute of Dermatologic Laser Surgery and a clinical professor of dermatology at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Transcript
Dr Barankin: Hi there. This is Dr Benjamin Barankin. I'm very honored today to have Dr Tina Alster with me. She established the Washington Institute of Dermatologic Laser Surgery in 1990 in her hometown of Washington, DC, where she lives with her husband and son.
She received her BS and MD degrees with the highest honors from Duke University and completed her dermatology residency at Yale University. She's a world-recognized leader in dermatologic laser surgery and has published widely in the field.
Her contributions have resulted in her being honored with the Women's Dermatologic Society Mentorship and Legacy Awards, American Society for Dermatologic Society Stegmann Award for Distinguished Service, the Dermatology Foundation Practitioner of the Year Award, and the Leon Goldman award from the American Society for Medicine and Surgery, among others.
Her commitment to teaching and mentoring is evident in her establishment of undergraduate and graduate scholarship endowments for women pursuing careers in medicine at Duke University.
In addition to maintaining leadership positions in numerous professional organizations, Dr Alster has been an active board member of Ford's Theater and served as gala chairperson of the Anti-Defamation League and the Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Gala.
She was a brand advisor to Lancome and Lamere for nearly a decade before launching her own skin care line, The A Method, in 2018. I'm very honored to welcome Dr Alster Alster. Thank you, Tina, for joining me.
Dr Alster: It's a pleasure to be here, Ben, thank you for having me.
Dr Barankin: Tina, I wanted to get to know you. I think our audience would love to get a little bit more familiar with you, have some fun answering interesting questions for us today. Let's first start off with maybe talking about your greatest travel experience or experiences.
Dr Alster: I love to travel. You and I have spoken about this before. Thank goodness, I took this round-the-world trip with National Geographic just a year ago. I was traveling for 3 weeks—22 days, 11 countries—I navigated the globe in the southern hemisphere. I had been putting that off for a few years.
Thank goodness, I finally cashed that in pre-COVID. I went back to a couple of places I've visited before including Marrakech and Siem Reap, to go to Angkor Wat, and I wanted just to go back to those two places.
Dr Barankin: It's certainly nice now in the age of COVID to have these memories of wonderful experiences.
Dr Alster: Absolutely. Some of the places I had been dying to go to, were not my most favorite, like Easter Island. I thought when else would I be able to go there? On this round-the-world trip is in the middle of the Pacific wasn't all that interesting. Of course, the Moy statues were interesting, you always see pictures of them, but it's a regular island, not that attractive.
My favorite was Jordan. I just loved Petra, I had been trying to go there for years and, in fact, was planning to go there 2 weeks after 9/11 happened. Obviously, after 9/11, there was no such travel at that time to the region, so I put it off obviously. Took 10 years to be able to get there, and I absolutely adored it. I also, not surprisingly, love Machu Picchu.
I'm a big hiker, so that was a rigorous day and I really enjoyed that. Other places like Kathmandu that we always dream about going to, didn't really like that so much, a lot of poverty, hard to discipline and unless you're just using it as a gateway to go up to Everest, I think that's probably the…
Dr Barankin: We're definitely going to add Petra, Jordan, and Machu Picchu to the bucket list. Thank you for that. I am a big fan and a collector of quotes, and quotations, and aphorisms, any favorite quotes?
Dr Alster: I have several. Some of them have to do with how I think about my daily life. Starting out young, I wrote a quote by Steve Martin I always loved, which was, "Be so good they can't ignore you." I've never been accused of being subtle, so I've enjoyed that.
There are other ones that I enjoyed as well as being a woman, and this is not even by a woman. It was Carl Sagan who said, "There's no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs." I think it all comes down to the fact that those of us in medicine, all work very hard, and it's nice to see that working hard gets you, hopefully where you want to go. We provide care to our patients, but there's also a lot of personal gratification we get from taking care of others.
Dr Barankin: Absolutely. If you weren't a physician, Tina, what might else you do?
Dr Alster: I think that will be easy for me, I love the visual arts. More than the visual arts, I enjoy settings and decorating. I'm a serial mover in terms of moving from place to place, renovating them, and making them all beautiful, and then, getting sick of them after I hang the last piece of art on the wall and starting all over again somewhere else.
I think that has something to do with what I do every day in my office which is, remodeling people's faces to make them a little bit better. Interior design is something I think I would be particularly good at.
Dr Barankin: Like a serial entrepreneur, but a serial interior designer.
Dr Alster: Right. The only thing is that with interior design, you pretty much have to listen to what your clients want. As physicians, we know we can listen to what our patients want but at the end of the day, we give them what we know would be better for them. In interior design, you do have to listen to your clients a little bit more.
Dr Barankin: That's absolutely right. They're signing the checks.
Dr Alster: That's correct.
Dr Barankin: Question for you. This reminds me of the one that they ask when you're applying to medical school or certainly the one that many of us prepare for, which is, if you could have three people for dinner, dead or alive, who would they be, and why?
Dr Alster: These days, in the days of COVID and being so close to NIH, I certainly want to get an audience with Dr Fauci, just to find out the background with all the vaccines and also the background with his dealings in the White House. You hear all sorts of these things flying around and only two blocks away from the White House where I'm sitting right now.
Everybody thinks they know what's going on, but certainly, Dr Fauci would give the true skinny, so he's definitely one. I'd love to have dinner with Bradley Cooper, I'd like to sit and look at him the entire time. We don't even have to have a conversation. The other person, I like living people rather than dead people. I know Nancy Pelosi, I'm one of those people that adore her. We always are in the same room and talking with a bunch of other people around, but I would love to be able to sit down with her and hear how she handles all those people, mostly men on the Hill, and how she chief enables all sorts of stuff. I'd like to learn some of her tricks.
I would really love to be in a room with not only her but RGB before she died and pick their brains a little bit. I think they're remarkable women.
Dr Barankin: Interesting. Some brilliant folks there and some eye candies.
Dr Alster: [laughs] Yeah. I'm not above stooping to eye candy.
Dr Barankin: Yeah, so we got the main course and then there's a little bit of dessert. OK, that's fine. I agree, I think having dinner with dead people, probably not as interesting. They tend to be a little bit quiet. Question, any advice you would give to your 18-year-old self?
Dr Alster: Oh, gosh. I took myself so seriously then. I took things so personally, I basically would tell myself, what people told me then which was, "Don't take things so personally." The other thing I'd say is that hard work really does pay off. I knew that then, I would like to go back and say, it really does pay, keep at it.
The other thing I'd say is that, if you're afraid to make a mistake, you probably won't achieve anything. The fear of making mistakes holds people back. Certainly, I know that held me back, maybe with learning another language. I usually have to have a couple of drinks of wine before I feel comfortable enough to make a mistake and speak a little bit of French.
Dr Barankin: Does your husband speak French?
Dr Alster: Yes, he does. As you know, my husband's Canadian. He was a career Foreign Service Officer for the Canadian government for nearly 30 years. He's not French Canadian but it was a good part of his basic schooling in Canada. My son also speaks fluently, he went to an international school here in Washington. I speak much better French after a couple of glasses.
Dr Barankin: To your point about hard work paying off, reminds me of the quote that I hold dear from Louis Pasteur, which is, "Chance favors the prepared mind."
Dr Alster: Yeah, that's very true. I know that quote. I like that one, too.
Dr Barankin: I used that at my dermatology residency interview.
Dr Alster: [laughs] No wonder you got in.
Dr Barankin: [laughs] That's right. What are your favorite activities, Tina?
Dr Alster: Outside of work, which we all do all the time, my favorite activities outside of work, are hiking; I take I actually make a point of taking a grueling hike every Saturday with a girlfriend of mine, even through COVID. We do the Billy Goat Trail, which is right outside of Washington, and it's aptly named because you really are scampering over rocks, climbing up rock faces. It's about a 5, 5.5-mile trek, but you're really doing a lot of activities. It's more than just a rigorous hike. You are climbing, and it can be a little death-defying. I do love hiking, and I also love Zumba. It reminds me of the old aerobics. It gets my heart rate up, and that's what I like to do.
As far as other activities, I'm a major shopper. It's a good thing COVID came around. I'm spending a lot less money because fewer stores are open. I have fewer places to wear the clothes I would buy at those stores.
Dr Barankin: I think a lot of husbands are very happy with COVID and the impact on the shopping spending.
Dr Alster: Yeah, but my husband doesn't pay for my shopping, don't forget.
Dr Barankin: Good point. This is the 21st century, right?
Dr Alster: That's correct. I think I pay for his shopping.
Dr Barankin: [laughs] How, Tina, do you balance career and family?
Dr Alster: I was very fortunate that I met my husband when I did. It was my grandmother that told me many years ago that you never want to marry somebody who's more attractive than you, because she thought that a guy would pay more attention to himself than you. I take it one step further. I think the most important career choice, as Sheryl Sandberg said, is, who you marry.
I think that I've been able to balance my medical career with my family because I'm married to a supportive spouse. As I told you, and you know, he is a diplomat, which anybody who knows me personally knows I'm terribly undiplomatic. I end up speaking my mind more often than not, and he basically softens my rough edges. Sometimes I'd like to be in people's faces, just to make a point.
I do think that I'm able to balance my career and family because he is that much more of a support to me on the home front. The fact that I'm still in my office late at night, most nights, and he does not keep bothering me to come home is actually big support to me. Otherwise, I'd be feeling guilty all the time.
Dr Barankin: Absolutely. I agree. Who you marry is probably the most important decision you'll ever make. If you could live anywhere other than Washington, where would it be?
Dr Alster: If we hadn't settled in Washington, I would say I would be in Washington. Certainly [inaudible 13:25] should be. My husband and I actually toyed with moving up to Canada, it's too cold and too dark most of the time, but we almost went to Montreal. I have to say that Washington is hard to beat on so many fronts. I spend a lot of time at our island home on Nantucket, but I can't live there year-round either.
The perfect marriage for me would be being in a city, whether that's in Washington or New York, but also spending a significant amount of time on an island, whether that's in the Caribbean or St. Barts. I love being in Capri and Italy or going to Nantucket. It just depends on the time of the year. It's hard for me to be in one place for 12 months of the year.
I do like to move. I'd like to change, and I always think that it would be very romantic to move to a place like Paris and improve our French. It's hard to beat being in North America. There's something to be said for that. With all the world travel I've done, there's no place like Washington.
Dr Barankin: Fortunately, as dermatologists and with our conferences and other opportunities, we do get to see so many parts of the world. I've been to Washington, basically because of the AAD conferences, and it is no doubt a world-class city and I'm definitely envious of you living there. Final question for you, what would be the best investment you've ever made?
Dr Alster: The best investment I've ever made has always been real estate. I grew up in a family, my father was a civil engineer who built private homes in and around the Washington DC area. I was always a decorator for those homes.
I have been known to buy places, fix them up, live in them, and sell them, not so much to make money, but I've always made money on each of those encounters. I have to say some of them have been bigger than others, but those have been the best investments.
Dr Barankin: We'll wrap things up, Tina. It has been a real honor and a privilege speaking with you and I thank you for your honesty, and for sharing a bit of yourself with our audience. Thank you so much for your time.
Dr Alster: Thank you, Ben, I so enjoyed talking to you. I look forward to reading more of your perspectives in our journals and hearing other people being interviewed.
Dr Barankin: Thank you.
Dr Alster: Thank you.
