Mission Isn't What You Say. It's What Your Organization Does Every Day.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Welcome to the Healthcare Success Podcast. Today I am talking to Dorian Harriston. She is the Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for Morehouse School of Medicine. Welcome, Dorian.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): Thank you, Stewart. It's wonderful to be with you.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Your life must be so good because you're just such a likable person. Does that happen everywhere you go? I bet it does. There's something about you that is just so likable. I know we have content here in a second, but I have to comment. You're such a disarming guest. I love having you already from the very beginning.

Today we're going to talk about mission. Mission is a topic in healthcare that is talked about reasonably often, often misunderstood, often something that's on the wall. I don't usually cover this topic on the podcast, but I thought today it was particularly relevant because I think Morehouse has a very distinctive mission in healthcare. So first of all, Dorian, I'd love to hear a little about your role and then pivot pretty quickly to Morehouse School of Medicine. What makes that mission so distinctive? Because I think that's the beginning of our discussion today.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): Morehouse School of Medicine's mission is the reason I think almost 98% of people who work there stay. The reason why I say that is I've been at Morehouse School of Medicine—and I'll be calling it MSM because that's what we call it, to make sure we don't confuse ourselves with Morehouse College. Even though we have a relationship, we are two separate institutions.

When we talk about Morehouse School of Medicine and mission, our mission statement is: "Leading the creation and advancement of health equity to achieve health justice." When you talk about that statement and the fact that 98% of people, when I arrived, were able to quote that in some form or fashion, if not quite fully, it showed how strongly that mission resonated with not only the people who work there, but the community.

At Morehouse School of Medicine, the mission is everything. It is the North Star that we follow. It is what we base our programs on, what guides our community engagement, and what drives our most important mission: creating a healthcare workforce that expands and diversifies to make sure people get what they need.

Mission is what I live by here at Morehouse School of Medicine, as well as everywhere else I've been. Mission is important, but when you can make the mission consistent and make other people buy in, I think that is what is truly resonating and making the success that we've had over the last 50-plus years.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, so there's a lot to unpack here, Dorian. A lot of organizations, I'm sure most, have a mission statement, but you guys feel different. It actually feels like it's part of your operating system. How does that mission influence your day-to-day decisions?

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): It leads our day-to-day decisions. If it is not in pursuit of and aligned with the mission, then why are we doing it? Health equity is for everyone. There's no one who cannot or does not deserve health equity. When you're being that inclusive of everyone, you have to make sure that your goals and your institution align with that.

I think that Morehouse School of Medicine has done a great job of that from the very beginning—making the mission what the strategic plan is based on, making the mission what spurs the organization and growth. Basically, the mission is why people not only attend as students, but the reason why they work there, the reason why they partner with Morehouse School of Medicine. It's all based on mission.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Great. I think I'm going to take a step back because I probably should have asked you this earlier. Tell me about the history of Morehouse School of Medicine because people may not know about the school, let alone your mission. Tell me about MSM.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): Morehouse School of Medicine was created to solve a specific problem, and that was the lack of Black physicians—especially, and more specifically, primary care physicians.

When it was created, it was also created so that everyone could experience healthcare at its most compassionate level, at its greatest expertise, in their communities. That is what has continued 50-plus years later. In 2025, we celebrated our 50th anniversary, which was a phenomenal testament to the work that has been done.

Over 17 graduate programs and 17 institutes later, we are growing exponentially over the last 50 years, and that growth touches everyone, especially through partnerships. One of the things that we say often at Morehouse School of Medicine is, "The world needs what we do best." That's because we have the data and the evidence to show that when you have a Black physician, a physician of color, or a physician who looks like the communities they represent, health outcomes increase for everyone.

We have a partnership with CommonSpirit Health called the More in Common Alliance, where we have our satellite campuses utilizing undergraduate and graduate medical education. We've also expanded throughout our own state, and we continue to use this as a blueprint and partnership model for health systems working with freestanding historically Black medical schools.

That's been successful because it was never meant for our school to simply be small or have parameters on growth. We want to make sure that what we are providing to the community—a new way of delivering compassionate care that better addresses community needs and expands access—continues to reach everyone. That's what we continue to work on.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That makes sense. Now you guys are home in the Atlanta area, correct?

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): We are in Atlanta. We are in the Atlanta University Center, next to our undergraduate colleagues at Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, as well as Spelman College.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Great. The reason why I asked that is, a lot of times—and I've actually had other guests talking about rural healthcare—is that a part of what you're doing? Are you looking to bring...

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): Absolutely. In the state of Georgia, our impact has been extremely great. We also have satellite campuses in Albany and in Columbus. We are making sure that we want to take care of everyone. Georgia is our home, but the world is our community. We want others from across the nation to come to us, but we also want to make sure that we retain the community engagement we have in Georgia because that's very important.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So the mission part—thinking about the roughly 5,000 hospitals around the U.S. and thousands of multi-location providers and different types of providers up and down the spectrum—your mission is tied to your history, right? It feels like that's a visceral part of the organization. Does that help you, as a marketing person, expand that? Because it feels like it's just a visceral part of the organization.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): It is. We just celebrated our 50th anniversary in 2025, and to have our founding president and dean, Dr. Louis Sullivan, attend that event was something phenomenal. A dream realized started in 1975 and then continued through becoming a separate institution in 1982.

We have grown and increased in size with the number of students that we produce each year, and that is an incredible accomplishment of our president and CEO, Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice. She is the first woman to lead the institution, and she has created significant growth throughout her tenure. I am extremely proud to work under her and for the things that she has made happen for Morehouse School of Medicine.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That's great. Going back to rural healthcare, there are definitely shortages of physicians across the board, particularly acute in rural areas. There's also burnout, competition for talent, and all those challenges. How does your clear mission influence who chooses to come to Morehouse?

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): We give priority to our Georgia residents because we want to make sure that we are taking care of home, as I mentioned. But everyone who comes, whether they come through one of our satellite campuses in Seattle or Chattanooga, or through our partnerships with several other health systems, comes to Morehouse School of Medicine for expertise, training, community engagement, and all of the other skills they will need to be successful healthcare professionals.

Then we send them back to their communities. We want to make sure they are taking care of those who took care of them, that they are making sure those who may not have the access they need now have access to an expert healthcare professional or even a research professional. With all of the programs in place, it's our medical students, our physician assistant students, our research students—it is all of these people who come back to their communities to make them better.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So does your mission give you an edge when you're recruiting? As you know, medical students have choices about where they want to go. Does that help you?

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): The mission is our recruitment strategy. If you can resonate with people and let them know the why, then they can decide if it's beneficial to them.

I think the students, as well as the faculty and staff, our clinicians, and everyone who comes to Morehouse School of Medicine come because of the mission. That is our number one recruitment strategy. If you can resonate with that, and that's something you want—maybe you've had an experience, maybe, like me, you've experienced some things with your family, with your parents and their healthcare, or with your own care—being a patient first helps keep me grounded in knowing where I want to be and what I want to do.

Every choice I've made in my career, including Morehouse School of Medicine, has been based on mission and how I can support it.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So you didn't know that, Dorian, but you just gave me the perfect pull quote.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): Did I? Sometimes it's a hit. It could be a miss, but sometimes it's a hit. Okay, good. I'm glad, because that was off the top of my head, Stewart. I'm glad it worked.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): You just stepped right into that. That was perfect. Holly, our producer, is going to grab that one. We'll see. Holly's the producer. We'll see if she makes that the pull quote, but I'd bet she will.

As you're talking to students—or bringing in doctors and other healthcare professionals—it isn't easy in healthcare these days. Do you find that people... I don't know what stage you're talking to them. Usually they're already pretty motivated to become a doctor by the time they talk to you. But maybe when you're talking to other people in the community about becoming a doctor, what motivates them to pursue medicine today despite all the challenges, in your experience?

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): In my experience, when I talk to people who are becoming doctors or healthcare professionals—or even delving into healthcare—is that it's always because they've had an experience, they've seen someone they love have a negative experience, or they've had health challenges that have constantly kept them in contact with healthcare professionals.

They either had a great experience that motivated them to want to do more, or they had a terrible experience that motivated them to come in and be a change. Since I've been in academic medicine since 2008, what I've seen at every institution where I've worked is that people are coming into this field, regardless of their age. Whether they are new professionals or seasoned professionals who have decided to make a pivot or go further, they're all coming because of the passion they have for expanding access, making care better, making it more affordable, or creating some kind of disruptive change that will move us in a better direction.

When I see that passion, I get extremely excited about what's to come because I want to be a part of history that makes things better and more convenient for people to be healthier and live longer.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I love that. You're definitely passionate, Dorian.

We've talked a little bit about students, we've talked about faculty, leaders, and employees. A lot of other organizations are competing on prestige—especially in academia and healthcare—or on compensation, rankings, and things like that. How does a mission-driven organization attract different kinds of people? I'm assuming it does. It seems like it's a different motivation entirely.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): The best way that I try to do that in my leadership is making sure that we tell our own story. I think that when you're able to tell your story in an authentic, genuine, and transparent way—what you're doing and why you're doing it—it marries up to that mission and only elevates it so that it gets to the audience you want it to get to.

Whether that's recruitment, bringing in revenue in other ways, or making sure patients have what they need and that their experience is great, what I'm always looking at is that people want to know, "What's in it for me?" If I can answer that question—why attend Morehouse School of Medicine, why work at Morehouse School of Medicine, why become a patient in our ambulatory practice—if I can explain how this will benefit you, then you are more likely to provide me with an opportunity to tell you more. You'll also be able to see whether your values and what you want from your experience align with what I'm saying and what we are offering as an institution.

I think we've been pretty good at doing that, which makes me happy because we want to, and always will, remain community-centered, patient-centered, and student-centered. Whatever it is that puts people at the forefront, I think that is always my goal as I lift up our mission.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Awesome. You hinted at something a little earlier, whether you meant to or not. You were talking about people who come to your school who either had a really bad experience in healthcare. I think a lot of the communities you serve may be underserved, and they may not have a lot of trust when it comes to healthcare because of experiences they've had.

How do you deal with that skepticism? Either as a medical school or in helping your doctors overcome that once they're in practice, how do you take a community that's very skeptical and win them over?

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): I don't think it's a case of winning them over.

When I first started in my career and at past institutions, you came into a community and said, "This is what you need. We're going to offer you this. We're going to give you that. We're going to make sure you have this." As I grew and really thought about it, I realized I don't tell people what they need. I ask them what they want.

When you open yourself up and ask people what they want, they are much more likely to tell you because you're asking them. You're interested. But you must follow through and be consistent.

I think we often assume what people want out of healthcare and what their needs are. Sometimes I find, through surveys, interviews, and the data we've collected, that people just want to be listened to. They want to say, "I don't like this doorknob syndrome where I'm always trying to tell my doctor what I need, but they already have their hand on the doorknob because they don't have enough time for me."

That's what we want to address through curriculum and experience. When you're creating healthcare leaders, you have to give them every scenario so that they're able to engage. I think that's what we continue to do with our mission—to engage in ways that resonate with people individually and with different audiences.

At Morehouse School of Medicine, I'm working with four generations of people. I'm working with Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z all in one area. You have to resonate with these audiences in the way they want to hear you, see you, and engage with you because every person who works at Morehouse School of Medicine is also a patient.

I want to hear from them internally so they can become ambassadors externally to help us push this mission forward and really stay on track so we're aligned, as you said, and getting out into the community. Hopefully that answers your question about how we try to get there.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, I think what you're saying are some fundamentals that people forget.

You mentioned a minute ago, "What's in it for me?" or "What's in it for them?" You also mentioned one of the things I've talked about for years, having been a consultant and speaker on the road for about 10 years. The power is in asking the right questions. It's not about what you say. It's about asking questions.

What you're talking about here is engaging your students, your staff, and the communities you serve by asking, "What is it you want?" I think that's really brilliant. That's super important.

Tell me about how your organization communicates its mission differently. What separates organizations that genuinely live the mission from those where it's just words on the wall? I don't know if you can speak to that, but what are the advantages you have? How does it vary?

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): I think we have a unique opportunity at Morehouse School of Medicine when I talk about those generations, our historical context, what has been done before, how we can do it better, what we should continue to keep, and what must change.

This is an uncertain environment, especially for a historically Black medical school. I think the expertise we have in all of our faculty and staff, and being both a graduate school and a medical school, helps us stay on the forefront of what's coming.

Through our partners and through the people in our stakeholder community, that's how we continue to move forward. That's how we keep the spark alive. I think the uniqueness comes from our ability to connect with the community so completely. We are the community. We stay in the community—not just for work. We live there, we work there, we play there, and we worship there.

Keeping your hand on the pulse and being able to pivot consistently is the real way I've been able to tell our story authentically. I've been able to tell our story even during moments that weren't quite right.

Our posts on social media do well, but our reels do really well. People want to see us in action and in motion. That wasn't the same at other institutions where I've worked. Knowing who you are and highlighting those special elements is so important.

As you can see from my background, we've rebranded. We elevate ourselves in different ways. We tell our story in different ways and use different mediums. Right now, I'm using AI as a workforce multiplier, not as a creative outlet for my team. I'm revenue-generating for my team. We're finding different ways to grow. We have a natural products outlet. We have a new genomics center. All of the things we do above and beyond—I'm simply trying to get those stories out and let people know who we are and how we can partner with them to expand their missions as well.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): You said something there that's interesting—the idea of social media.

I'm going to ask a question, and I think I know the answer, but I'll ask you anyway. Remember, I just said asking questions is important.

Do you feel like your social media gets more engagement because of the mission you have? There are so many healthcare providers and institutions where, if you look at their organic social media, it's almost a wasteland. A lot of people are trying really hard, but nobody's engaging. I've got a feeling that your mission naturally creates more engagement because people connect with it, versus just another clinical update. But I'm curious.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): When I came, we relaunched the blog. It had been down for a little while.

What I'm noticing is that the stories we do leading up to graduation—about students who may be first-generation students, or whose parents may be physicians, and why they chose research or another area—those personal stories really resonate. Getting to know the people you're around every day, our faculty and staff, the special things they've done in their past, the work they're doing now, and the awards they're winning—that more personal touch is what people respond to.

I think in this age of mistrust, people really want to know who you are. They want to know who you are beyond who you tell them you are. How do we reinforce expertise while also making it more human? No one wants their doctor, nurse, or healthcare professional to feel unapproachable. People want to know these are human beings who will care for them the way they care for everyone else.

We're trying to present a more human side of the people who come through our doors. That also extends to our pipeline programs because we want to keep that moving, especially with the workforce crisis. We want to make sure we're staying ahead of that as part of our mission.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Another question occurred to me because of something you said a couple of questions back.

I've worked with thousands of doctors and healthcare professionals over the years, and this doesn't come up every day, but I've certainly had doctors tell me, "In medical school I learned the clinical stuff, but I didn't really learn about nutrition. I didn't really learn about obesity. I didn't really learn the soft skills, like the patient experience."

With your mission, and with the skepticism that exists in some of the communities you serve, does Morehouse School of Medicine have specific programs that help teach those soft skills and help physicians relate to the community in addition to the clinical skills, or is it more ad hoc?

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): Absolutely.

Our clinical arm, Morehouse Medicine, has the tagline "Compassionate Care." That serves as an umbrella over everything we do.

Right now we're working on a new curriculum because we stay ahead of the game. We do our best to ensure our students receive the best education possible. In doing that, it has to be well-rounded. It has to include cross-training, and the experiences have to be there.

You're absolutely right. It starts the moment students walk onto campus. It continues throughout their education, and it continues as alumni because we want to make sure we're providing everything they need to be successful while also lifting up the brand and giving them something to be proud of. I think we're doing that.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): You mentioned during our pre-call that budget comes up a lot, along with other difficult decisions that every organization has to make.

How does the mission help guide your choices as a leader—either individually or collectively—when you have to make tradeoffs? Not everything is perfect, I'm assuming, even for you, Dorian.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): Absolutely.

That is an especially relevant question right now.

I think it's about prioritizing according to the mission because you have to hold some things sacred.

Given the external environment we're operating in, we have to continue to pivot so we can give everyone what they need while continuing to grow and expand. Our president constantly says you don't have to think small—you should continue thinking big and then find ways to make it happen. I think that's exactly what we do with the mission.

We make sure the most important things—our students, our patients, every stakeholder, our faculty, and our staff—are good. Once we're prioritizing in ways that benefit both them and the institution, those difficult decisions become a little easier.

I constantly stay ready to pivot and look ahead to what may happen. There was a period when I dreaded Friday nights because there always seemed to be a major announcement on Friday evening that I had to be prepared to respond to by Monday morning.

I've tried to stay ahead of that. We created an alternative style guide to make sure our messaging stayed aligned, and I shared it with some of my colleagues. I wanted to offer support while also making sure we were all speaking the same language because, during times like these, we can't afford to operate in silos when things are moving so quickly.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That's great.

As we're wrapping up here, if every organization became more mission-driven, how would things be different for patients, employees, and communities?

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): Things would be more consistent.

It's nice to say you're mission-driven, but what's the outcome? Your mission is almost a call to action. How are you answering that mission? How are you moving yourself forward in a way that's commendable? How are you moving forward in a way that's helping people?

If you're not making life easier for your patients, your students, or the people you serve, then why are you in business? What are we doing this for?

It has to be because this mission drives everything else. That has to be the umbrella that covers everything, in my opinion.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That makes sense.

As we wrap up here, I have a couple more questions. We have a lot of people from healthcare organizations listening in a variety of roles. They could be CEOs, heads of communications or marketing, or leaders in other departments. We have a pretty broad audience, as you've probably seen from some of our past episodes.

It's often said that the CEO is the one who drives the mission. Certainly they can't be outside the mission because it's hard to be consistent otherwise. But how do you think that evolves throughout an organization? In your case, it feels like your history created a virtuous cycle. From the very beginning, the organization was built this way, so it attracted the right kinds of leadership, and those leaders continued reinforcing the mission.

Do you have any comments on that? And what advice would you have for organizations that don't have the advantage of walking into such a clearly defined mission?

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): I may have an unpopular opinion on this.

I don't think the president and CEO can drive the mission. I think they have to be an ambassador and an example of it. You have to get every single person in the institution on board and engaged in order for it to be successful. If you have some people saying, "Well, that's a nice mission. It sounds nice. It seems nice," then there will be no action beyond it.

If there's no action beyond it, people begin to see it as pretty words and another reason to mistrust the organization. Mistrust is already at an all-time high. If you want people to trust you, it has to start with the president and CEO, but it has to continue through the executive leadership team. It has to continue through every department, every manager, every director, every leader, and every frontline employee. If we're not all speaking the same language, then we'll all be operating in silos. I've experienced that before, and it's very hard to get anything done in that type of environment.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I can say, as the CEO of a company—we're not a hospital or health system, but we have a 40-person team—that even with a team our size, when we have our mission and especially our values, which we review every week during our team meetings, people will forgive us if a week or two goes by and we're not fully living one of those values.

But if we're not living those values consistently, it becomes a joke. It becomes a negative thing. It's really important. We've talked about hiring and firing around our values and building the organization that way. That's a little different from the mission, but the world isn't perfect. You can't always pivot instantly if you have the wrong person, but it's really important to keep coming back to those principles.

What other advice would you have for someone who's responsible for communications, or simply someone who wants to improve their organization's mission? There are certainly branding processes. Our agency goes through this all the time, helping clients create their mission, vision, and values. There are established processes for that.

Based on your experience here and elsewhere, how do you pull that together? I'd love to hear how that process works for organizations that don't already have it when they walk in.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): If they don't already have it, I think people are often very quick to say, "We need to rebrand."

But if you don't understand who you are as an organization, if you don't understand what your values are and where your line in the sand is, then what are you really doing? Do you do everything? Do you only do certain things? I think the first step is finding that out.

I don't necessarily want to use the word "auditing," but I would say assessing. I think it's the same process you follow with anything. You assess. You evaluate a strategy. You create your plan. You test it. If it's not working, you continue to pivot, evaluate again, and repeat the process.

For organizations trying to figure out who they are, not everyone can afford to do what I did when I arrived. I hired an agency to help determine our brand health and help us develop the language around our brand, but not everyone has the resources to do that.

If you can't, then you really need to sit down—not only with your leadership team, but also with your middle managers and frontline employees—and ask, "Who are we? What direction have we decided to go? What are we going to focus on?" Then you absolutely have to validate that through research because you may not be who you think you are.

I've experienced that myself. I've evaluated an organization, believed it was one thing, then received the data and realized it wasn't quite what I thought.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I think that guiding light is so essential.

You have a history that you're able to capitalize on, but if you're building it from scratch, there's a much longer road ahead. It's not just about writing pretty words. You have to figure out who the organization really is and work closely with your leadership team.

As an agency, that's a lot of what we do. We have a process to help organizations uncover that. It isn't just about who you are and who you want to be. It's also about deciding what you're going to say no to.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): Right. Decide where your line in the sand is. Decide what you're going to do and what you're not going to do.

I was always taught that a brand should be bold, relevant, authentic, novel, and direct. I've carried that with me throughout my career. I ask myself how I can answer those questions while still being all of those things.

If I can't, then maybe there's something I'm not thinking about, or maybe there's something I need to determine isn't actually a factor that should remain. Sometimes people don't do that.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Dorian, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for joining me.

Dorian Harriston (Morehouse School of Medicine): Thank you so much, Stewart. I'm so honored to be on. Thank you again so much.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Awesome.