To be Dr Sharon Oginda is to be multi-hyphenated. She is a general surgeon, businesswoman, teacher, researcher, and leader. To keep those hyphens sturdy, she says, “Took me collaboration. And mentorship.”
Beneath that patina of ambition is initiative and grit. Nothing has been handed down to her, which is not to say that she goes alone. Contrary. Teamwork makes the dream work, to appropriate a hackneyed phrase. “And choosing your team well. There’s only so much you can know; you have to learn from others.” Teamwork is indispensable to her, but she is a star, a gravitational force pulling others into her orbit.
Her setbacks have only functioned to serve as set-ups. “Maybe my personal failure is that I didn’t recognize early on how my silence contributed to matters going wrong. I thought things would change by just working hard, or by people looking at what you do, but many things would have changed then if I just spoke.”
Now that she knows better, she does better. She is more vocal now, focusing on women in surgery and how systems—particularly within healthcare leadership—impact patient outcomes at the end of it all.” So much so that now she speaks on and for the lady surgeons in Kenya.
"Success is about creating impact and pulling others up, beyond Sharon, not being an individual superstar."
Hers is a career that is insatiable, demanding more and more from one, and the hard part is how she makes it look easy. “We are only taught to be surgeons in school, but you come out here and interact with patients, and you need to learn people skills. And being a lady surgeon, the technical skills demand you to get out of your comfort zone.”
Not that that has been a problem for her, despite it being a problem for others. As a lady, she says, sometimes people may not see your expertise as being equivalent to that of your male colleagues.
“That takes humility and resilience to let them know you are just as good.” Perhaps even better. Collaboration is how she makes her work idiosyncratic, especially in how individualistic surgeons can be—Type A personalities driven by the illusion that they can, and should, do it all on their own.
Success has come with a high bill: “I have had to miss a lot of things. Family, friends, and sacrifices that are literally unseen by others.” “Something has to give,” she says, but she does not have time to regret actions both taken and not.
Now, she’s taking a gander into her crystal ball, and she sees how success has changed, from individual glory to wanting to leave a legacy. “Success is about creating impact and pulling others up, beyond Sharon, not being an individual superstar,” she delivers the indictment with the cold precision of a scalpel to an artery.
–Eddy Ashioya