New COO inspired by CoM vision

It wasn’t a turn he expected to see his career take, but now Gregory Power can’t imagine working for anything but a medical school.

Power, who joined the College of Medicine in March as the new Chief Operating Officer, now finds himself halfway across the country and starting a new adventure in Saskatchewan.

“I was at Dalhousie for five-and-a-half years,” Power explained. “At first I was brought into what I would call a very traditional IT role, but at the time Dalhousie was expanding its medical reach to the province of New Brunswick, integrated clerkships in rural areas of New Brunswick, as well as greater degree of educational distribution in Nova Scotia.

“So part of my role was figuring out how to enable that either via technology or (through) business models.”

Power, who has a Master’s in computer science, became a certified professional accountant about five years ago, though he has spent the majority of his career in a more broad business operation leadership role than immersed in information technology.

And while half a country separates the two, he sees quite a few parallels between Dalhousie and the University of Saskatchewan.

“They’re similar sized populations, very similar challenges in what medical schools are trying to address whether it’s rural health care, and retention of physicians or some systemic issues in respect to our societies,” he continued. “There’s great opportunity here in Saskatchewan.”

Power feels that a lot of his excitement for the role comes from the diverse challenges and opportunities that the college has, whether they’re ways to improve MD finances, or enable education through information technology – which all lead back to providing a world-class educational experience for all the students and residents.

“I think it’s just the breadth and diversity of challenges that has me most excited,” Power stressed. “I think I take a lot of inspiration of the vision of (becoming) Canada’s best small medical school.

“I’ve always thought that the administrative part of an institution is to enable others.”