Stories
Stories
Christina Ehrenberg: The Examined Life
For Christina Ehrenberg (MBA 2001), HBS is only the latest in a series of remarkable learning experiences the world itself has been her greatest teacher, imparting to her a wisdom and composure that belie her years. An only child whose father, now retired, was a German air force officer, Ehrenberg decided at an early age that she wanted to be a doctor. I was very concerned about sick people, she says, and I thought medicine was the greatest job in the world. In 1997, she graduated from medical school in Munich and started specializing in interventional radiology, a high-tech form of radiology that includes embolization and angioplasty. Simultaneously, she worked toward a Ph.D. in psychiatry, which she received in 1999.
Perhaps more importantly, medical school also made possible what Ehrenberg calls life-changing events elective field-medicine sojourns in Israel, Ghana, and Papua New Guinea. The focus of medical practice and the attitudes of practitioners in those places were so different than in the West, notes Ehrenberg. In Israel, doctors felt they could never go home because there were always more patients in urgent need of care. In Papua New Guinea, I worked on a tiny island where the people, despite their poverty, valued generosity over possessions. The hospital was little more than a hut, and patients slept on the floor. It was essential, rudimentary medicine, a stark contrast to my experience with diseases of civilization medical problems often caused by excesses in diet and lifestyle.
Lessons also emerged from failure. After weeks of training for a climb to the top of Papua New Guineas 14,800-foot Mount Wilhelm, Ehrenberg abandoned her quest within sight of the summit to care for two other climbers who had fallen ill. I realized afterwards, she says, that sacrificing personal ambition and achievement for the good of the group is something leaders must be prepared to do.
Ehrenberg met her husband, John Wong, a surgeon of Chinese-Australian heritage, in Hong Kong while doing part of her medical residency there. The couple has a two-year-old son, Elliott, who lives with Ehrenberg in Cambridge, while Wong not certified to practice in the United States works in Hong Kong, visiting Boston when he can. Its been hard, acknowledges Ehrenberg, who looks forward to settling this summer in London, where shell be working at Goldman Sachs in asset management with a biotech focus.
Of her HBS experience, Ehrenberg says, Unlike the rote, top-down German education system, here you are an equal partner in ongoing learning and discussion. HBS has made me more critical in my thinking and more entrepreneurial in my actions. And Ive learned to lead from behind rather than from the front.
Ehrenbergs decision to enter the private sector was driven largely by the realization that she could help more people by mastering the business and management of health care, and by the desires to learn something new and to have more time for her personal life. Down the road, she may eventually take a position with one of the major global health organizations. Whatever Ehrenberg chooses to do, theres no doubt the world will be the better for it.
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