Life After Chair: Transition Out of Leadership and Into Retirement

Gail D’Onofrio, MD, MS, is the Albert E. Kent Professor of Emergency Medicine and Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Yale University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. As a physician-scientist, she has had continual NIH funding for over two decades, designing and conducting clinical trials that have changed clinical practice. In addition, she was one of the founding members of the Board of Addiction Medicine that became recognized as an ABMS-approved subspecialty in 2016, sponsored by the American Board of Preventive Medicine. Dr. D'Onofrio is the MPI of the New England Consortium Node for the NIDA Clinical Trials Network and is the MPI of both a NIDA-funded and NINDS-funded K12 training program.

Brian J. Zink, MD, is Adjunct Professor and Senior Advisor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. Zink's primary areas of focus are faculty and leadership development, mentoring and coaching, medical humanities, and the history of emergency medicine. Earlier in his career he was a researcher in alcohol effects in traumatic brain injury and shock. Dr. Zink wrote the first comprehensive history of US emergency medicine. After serving as the Associate Dean for Student Programs at Michigan, he was selected as the inaugural Chair of Emergency Medicine at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Chief of Emergency Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital and served in this role for 12 years. He was on the Board of Directors of the Lifespan Health System. Dr. Zink has served as the President of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM, 2000), the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine (AACEM, 2012), and the SAEM Foundation (2021). He founded and is Co-Director of the SAEM/AACEM Chair Development Program. Dr. Zink has received the Hal Jayne Academic Excellence Award and John Marx Leadership Award from SAEM, the Outstanding Contribution in Education Award from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), and the Distinguished Service Award from AACEM. He practiced EM in academic hospital emergency departments for 36 years. In 2024 he formed Brian J. Zink Coaching and Consulting, LLC, and is now focused on growing and developing the next generation of leaders in academic medicine.

Theodore A. Christopher, MD, served as the Green Family Foundation and John and Patricia Walsh Professor and Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University from 2002-2024. He is a Past President of the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine (AACEM), the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, and the Pennsylvania Medical and Philadelphia County Medical Societies, and has been a Pennsylvania Delegate to the American Medical Association for 22 years. He currently serves on the board executive committee of the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation, the city’s premier non-profit public health organization serving Philadelphia’s vulnerable populations, and was a member of the Governor’s State Opioid Crisis and Physician COVID-19 Task Forces, Co-Chairing the Jefferson Health System’s Enterprise Opioid Task Force for 16 years. He also served as Chairman of the University Hospitals’ Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee for more than 20 years. A Summa Cum Laude graduate of Harvard College, Dr. Christopher attained his medical degree at the Icahn School of Medicine of Mount Sinai in New York before completing residencies in Internal Medicine at Brown University’s Rhode Island Hospital, and in EM at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Dr. Christopher has been active in EM clinical practice, administration, education, and research at Jefferson for 42 years. Under his leadership, Jefferson’s Department of Emergency Medicine has treated millions of patients and has helped establish Thomas Jefferson University Hospital as one of Philadelphia’s premier safety net hospitals. Dr. Christopher has written or co-authored more than 100 peer reviewed articles, published more than 160 abstracts, and lectured nationally and internationally on the social determinants of health, cardiac ischemic injury research, hospital patient access and flow, leadership, and the future of EM and health care. Under his academic leadership, Jefferson’s Department of Emergency Medicine was nationally ranked in specialty-specific NIH funding.