Q: What’s something people would be surprised to know about you?
CS: I’ve been working as a yacht rigger since I was 11 years old. I grew up on the water in Rhode Island, and by the time I was a teenager I was climbing masts and tuning standing rigging on offshore racing vessels. I’ve continued to work in the marine industry throughout medical school and have found the attention to detail and comfort with high-stakes problem solving that comes from rigging a sailboat aren’t all that different from medicine.
Q: What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned so far in your life?
CS: Rule number one is have fun. That sounds simple, but I mean it wholeheartedly. The people I admire most, in medicine and outside of it, are the ones who never lost genuine enthusiasm for what they do. Medicine is challenging field, training is long, and the stakes are real. If you can’t find joy in it, you won’t be able to care for your patients the way they deserve.
Q: What’s the greatest challenge you’ve ever had to overcome?
CS: Balancing competing identities during medical school has been a challenge. I came in as a Division I athlete, a first responder, a sailor, a researcher, someone with a full life even before starting my medical education. Medical school has a way of asking you to set all of that aside and just become a student. I pushed back on that, kept running, I started road cycling, kept working on boats, kept going on calls at the fire department, and discovered a love of winter mountaineering. It made the schedule brutal at times, but it kept me grounded in who I actually am. I think it made me a better medical student too. I bring context to the bedside that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Q: What book do you always recommend to people?
CS: Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. Not exactly light reading, but I think it’s one of the most important books a future physician can read, not because it’s about medicine, but because it’s about what happens when intelligent, capable people stop asking moral questions about their own actions. Arendt called it the “banality of evil.” In medicine, institutional pressures can quietly erode judgment the same way. I’d rather confront that idea now than discover it later in my career.
Q: What is your most memorable memory at RISOPS?
CS: Shadowing Dr. Jordan Hebert, DO, between my first and second year of medical school. We were involved in a number of minimally invasive foregut procedures together, and he took the time to walk me through GI tract perfusion in a way that finally made it click, taking something I had only seen in my dissections and grounding it in live anatomy. Coming out of a year of classrooms and boards prep, that kind of hands-on clinical exposure was exactly what I needed heading into second year, it got me so excited for what was in store for me on clinical rotation. It’s also a big part of why mentorship is so central to my work on the committee now. That one experience had a real impact, and I want to make sure other students have access to the same thing.
Q: Why is it important to you to be part of your state osteopathic medical association?
CS: I grew up in Johnston, Rhode Island. My first exposure to emergency medicine was as a volunteer EMT and firefighter in Glocester, a rural, medically underserved community where the difference between a good outcome and a bad one often came down to who showed up first and how well they were trained. RISOP represents the physicians who serve communities like that. Being part of this association means investing in a pipeline of osteopathic physicians who are committed to Rhode Island and making sure the students coming up behind me have the mentorship and support to get there.
Q: How long have you been involved with RISOPS?
CS: I first got involved with RISOPS in 2022 when the committee review my medical school application, ultimately supporting me through my application process to the University of New England College of Medicine. I can’t thank them enough for their guidance over the years and am proud to now be part of such a great organization!