It is one thing to be living your dream. It’s quite another to be living a dream. Dr Kristina Sule leans towards the latter. She wanted to be an obstetrician and became one.
“I knew I wanted to help women deliver, helping women who are struggling to get pregnant, as an infertility specialist,” she says.
But the stars conspired and offered her a bigger dream: help women feel comfortable in their skin, especially after delivery, which can come with sexual dysfunction.
You can see that dream manifest today as Allora Medical Practice, and Dr Sule as the chief cosmetic gynaecologist. In other words, she makes women look better, if not just as good, after conceiving.
"I knew I wanted to help women deliver, helping women who are struggling to get pregnant, as an infertility specialist."
Already, she has built Allora to more than 20 examination rooms in a luxury-coded space.
The mission has been personal for her. “My mother struggled to conceive.”
That was the seed of inspiration whose fruit is blooming today: a master’s in Obstetrics and Gynaecology that she says is a “a really intense programme which I was doing as a new mum”.
She adds: “Having a space for women that is inclusive, where they feel heard and every need of theirs matters—pregnancy, cosmetics, or menopause.”
A prerequisite for such a dream? Belief. Doubt will kill any ambition.
“Initially, it was a lot of ‘fake it till you make it’. In medical school, you’re told if you’re a really great doctor and you study really well, all the patients are going to come to you. Then you start your clinic, and realise that’s not the case and that nobody’s going to come. You go for them.”
There are many failures, she says, but you have to learn how to pivot. She is still dreaming that Allora becomes a space to accommodate many more women with more branches outside of Nairobi.
–Eddy Ashioya