A photo of the ribbon cutting for the UCR School of Medicine Education Building II captured the moment the building officially opened, but for Vladimir Oge, MPH, director of Strategic Initiatives (SI) at the SOM, the shot signifies much more. “That I contributed to something that truly is going to be part of the school's history, that there's only going to be one ribbon cutting ceremony for that building and I was there to help make it happen, was very memorable for me,” he recalled.

Playing a part in the successful celebration and creating a blueprint for future SOM milestones helped build Oge’s confidence in his role, which he began in early 2020. As the director of the SOM’s Strategic Initiatives team, Oge focuses on telling the SOM’s story through the 10th anniversary and beyond.

Oge helps guide the school’s strategic direction through internal communications to faculty, staff, and students and external communications to the local community and beyond. He also contributes to executive communications, including helping prepare Deborah Deas, MD, MPH, the vice chancellor for health sciences and the Mark and Pam Rubin dean of the School of Medicine, for speaking engagements. “I definitely see myself as someone who can help her expand and amplify her voice,” he said. Outside UCR, Oge additionally serves on the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Group on Institutional Advancement (GIA) Steering Committee, helping plan the organization’s annual conference and year-round programming focused on fostering professional growth for alumni relations, communications, community relations, development, and marketing colleagues within the AAMC. “I’m truly grateful for my role with the GIA because it provides opportunities to partner with and exchange ideas with so many talented academic medicine professionals, while also creating a space to represent UCR and share our story with peers across the nation,” he said.

Day to day, Oge’s varied responsibilities involve everything from writing reports and drafting leadership talking points, to meeting with teams including Development and Government and Community Relations, to contributing to SOM event planning and logistics, to handling media relations and requests from reporters. “When someone sees that a UCR SOM faculty member has their research published or is being interviewed by a news outlet, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes to highlight those stories that many people don't understand,” Oge explained. Media relations “involves connecting with reporters, getting clarification on what the inquiry is and, assuming it's within mission scope, determining who the best person is to respond to that inquiry and prepare them as necessary.”

Oge also works extensively with UCR Health, particularly the director of marketing, Eileen Kwan. “What has been so great about my collaboration with Vlad is that we find a way to tell a story about the work we do collectively, and we're much stronger united," said Kwan. “The way that shows up is that we are working actively on pulling together talking points for elected officials that come and visit us here on campus, and advocates, partners, donors who want to give more to our mission for the School of Medicine or UCR Health,” she added. “Without Vlad's collaboration, we wouldn't be able to have such compelling value propositions to put forward.”

Using communications to advance public health

Oge’s role builds on his experiences gained throughout a career in higher education and student health services, including at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Florida. His background in public health helped him understand health equity issues that need to be addressed, while his former positions gave him the opportunity to lead multidisciplinary teams while translating messaging to engage hard-to-reach communities. “Along the way, I realized that the common thread in my work was that I was very heavily focused on communications and marketing leadership and specifically around health and well-being,” Oge said.

The SOM role attracted him for the opportunity to expand his communications and leadership focus while continuing to work for an organization dedicated to serving vulnerable populations. “That's definitely in keeping with my own personal mission and the things that I've always stood for,”’ Oge said. “I couldn't resist the opportunity to apply, and here we are.”

While he faced challenges beginning his role during the COVID-19 pandemic and entering the new-to-him field of academic medicine, Oge persevered and has consistently used his skills in communications to help the SOM thrive.

“Vlad is very good at forming connections with people from a variety of different places, in a variety of different roles, performing a variety of different functions,” said Brian Blackburn, formerly an alumni and external relations coordinator on the SI team. “He's always able to talk to somebody about the work they're doing, relate it back to the work he's doing, and seemingly come out of that conversation with both people having learned something.”

Oge now looks forward to contributing long term to the SOM’s mission of improving access to healthcare in the Inland Empire. “I can foresee that because of the work that I'm doing today, 10 years from now this school and this health enterprise will undoubtedly achieve its mission and really support the needs of so many people in this region who are more than deserving of getting state of the art healthcare,” he said. “To know that I can be a part of the conversations and activities that lead to all that is definitely exciting.”

Supporting and promoting units across the SOM

Oge has also enjoyed collaborating with the rest of the SI team to support the school’s mission. “I’ve worked with a lot of teams through my career, and I can easily say that this has been my favorite team to work with because it's people who really take pride in and are great at what they do, and are willing to be creative and self-sacrificing enough to get things done,” he said.

Oge noted that the team’s many functions, from communications planning to handling data requests to providing swag items to writing articles, often confuse others at the SOM about its core purpose. “Being in that position where we are strategically placed everywhere, and having these tentacles across the organization, is good because it gives us a unique viewpoint on the school that most people don't have,” Oge said. “We get the benefit of being able to see a broader landscape and, in turn, find new ways to be creative in the way that we can convey what the school is about.”

One example was the SI team’s recent role in facilitating the Biomedical Sciences 50th Anniversary and its ongoing efforts to promote faculty research. “We want to do as much as we can to highlight the great work that they're doing and how it contributes to the field of biomedical sciences and academic medicine uniquely, but ultimately fulfills the intended purposes to benefit  society and really contribute to advancing health and well-being,” Oge said.

He added that the SI team’s promotion and support efforts extend to all SOM units and departments. “We want to make sure that we're presenting the school in the best light, telling the best stories that we can and creating the best experiences possible,” Oge said. “I hope everyone knows that we're really focused on lending our support where needed, and if there are questions, it's easy to just ask us–I think that we're very approachable, and we're very much willing to share our talents and expertise for the betterment of the school.”

Leading by example

In Oge’s own team role, he sees himself as guiding the team and cheering their successes while also leading by example. “I have always been the type of person where I don't feel comfortable asking people to do things I wouldn't do myself,” Oge said. “I appreciate the opportunities to be on the front lines with my team, setting up events early and staying late to break them down, because I think those things matter and I want them to see someone who's not afraid to literally roll the sleeves up and get work done at any capacity.”

Oge’s willingness to get involved with tasks at all levels was clear to Blackburn, who recalled working with him on the 10th Anniversary Gala when the SI team’s event director and manager of external relations and protocol, Kate Dorff, was on maternity leave. “Vlad was very good at rallying everybody together to actually coordinate things that were going on and make sure we were staying on track,” Blackburn said. “It seemed like he was a bit out of his element in the sense that he wasn't really an event planner, but he was very much a natural leader and somebody always willing to take point and say, 'If there's a gap that needs to be filled, I can do it.’”

Oge looks forward to continuing to help guide the SI team, and the SOM as a whole, while contributing to its next chapter through expanding its community strategy, proactively addressing emerging issues, and more effectively engaging community stakeholders. “We were telling the story up until that first milestone of 10 years, and now we're needing to tell the next story about the School of Medicine and UCR Health,” Oge said. “It's exciting to be part of the team that's helping shape that story that will last for years and years to come.”

Like the 10th anniversary ribbon cutting photo, Oge doesn’t feel the need to be directly in the picture as he works with the SI team toward the school’s success. “Whether it’s the smiling faces of all the excited students at commencement, to the ones who are just starting out at the White Coat ceremony, we do things in a way where we're not the story but we facilitate the story,” Oge said. “I enjoy the moments where I feel like we've put on a great event, or submitted a report, or responded to something quickly and effectively and left people feeling better than they may have felt in the beginning,” he added. “The things that give me that feeling of ‘mission accomplished’ are the favorite parts of my job.”