Doug Hammond0:20
Lori made me promise not to take more than an hour this evening because it's the last one to go, so Michael, we really have to keep it to a specific time limit. I'm sitting at a table tonight with John Chambers, Lisa Sue, Michael Ding, Tomarrow Lungren, Mary Daly, John Lren, my beautiful wife Trish, and I'm asking why am I sitting there? It's an amazing honor to be around all of you in such a great crowd of unbelievable honorees and such a great event tonight, so thank you so much. Tonight it's my pleasure and honor to talk a little bit about my friend Michael Dowling. Since joining Northwell's board several years ago, I've had the pleasure of witnessing Michael's leadership and the incredible team that he surrounds himself with every single day at Northwell. And the staff at Northwell, they are exceptional human beings caring for people every single day. Since becoming CEO of Northwell in 2002, Michael has led Northwell to become the largest private employer in New York and the largest healthcare provider in New York. Northwell serves and cares for over two million people every single year. That is an amazing feat. But what truly distinguishes Michael's leadership is much deeper than that. The success of the institution he oversees is really about a relentless drive to better the circumstances of other people through care, employment, innovation, to take on the biggest and hardest challenges without regard to the height of the mountains that Michael climbs and that the staff and executives at Northwell climb; they take them on every day and they pursue excellence in what they do. I want to talk a little bit about Michael's true character. There's a book that I love called The Second Mountain by a guy named David Brooks. It's about the quest of a moral life that I think perfectly describes Michael. Every once in a while we meet a person who radiates joy. These are people who seem to glow with an inner light. These people are not perfect; they get exhausted and stressed, they make errors in judgment, but they live for others and not for themselves. They know they were put on Earth and derive deep satisfaction from doing what they have been called to do. Life isn't easy for these people; they've taken on the burdens of others, but they have a determination about them, a settled resolve. They are interested in you and they make you feel cherished and known, and take delight in your good. When you meet these people, you realize that joy is not just a feeling, it is an outlook. There are temporary highs we all get after we win some victory, and then there is also this other kind of permanent joy that animates people who are not obsessed with themselves but have given themselves away. What I witness at Northwell hospital every single day is the giving of oneself to others. Michael comes from a place of deep poverty and he's risen above it to help everyone else. When you think about how the hospital operates, it has, I think, 17 billion or $18 billion of revenue, more or less, that's compressed down to a very tight margin. And with what margin is left, he makes sure that every dollar is spent around behavioral health, veterans care, mobile clinics, helping those that are less fortunate. My own first experience with Northwell hospital when I joined the board at the hospital system was in the emergency room. I called up the board trustee person; I was having an emergency in the middle of the evening that was quite urgent. I waited until I thought she would wake up because I didn't know where to go. I finally got in touch with Laura and she said go to Huntington Hospital, speak to this person, you'll get there. I went to the emergency room to take care of my own issue. There was an urgency to it and I was treated very well when I got there. While I was there, a person came in who I was absolutely certain did not sleep that night with a roof over their head. And that person was untidy and smelled terribly and was not from a place that I'm from. And I can tell you what made me most proud about being associated with Northwell hospital is that the care that that person received was exactly the same level of care that I received in that emergency room that very early morning. It was absolutely amazing. And I knew I had made a great decision participating on the board. That is what Michael Dowling has created at Northwell hospital: a hospital that offers the greatest level of care for all sorts of complex issues but cares also for those most in need. So it's my pleasure this night to introduce you to Michael, who's a wonderful human being.
