Interview with Kim Marie-Beld

Troy Reeves 00:01Okay, today is July 8, 2021. This is an oral history interview with Kim Beld. My name is Troy Reeves. I'm with the UW Madison Oral History Program. This interview is being done for the Academic Staff Award winners oral history project, and this interview is being done remotely through zoom. So Kim, to help me with the audio quality, could you start by saying your name and spelling your last name?

Kim Beld 00:27Sure, Kim Beld. B as in boy, E-L-D.

Troy Reeves 00:31Great. And that is perfect. That's that picked you up just fine. So we should be great speaking at our, our current voice level. Alright, so I sent you the topics in advance. And I just want to start with the very first one that broad question about what brought you to UW Madison?

Kim Beld 00:50That's a great question. And, really, I was born and raised in Madison. So UW Madison has been in my backyard most of my life. And I have a long history with the campus, my mom went to medical school here back in the late 50s, which women were not going to medical school back then. And worked as a pediatric oncologist for 13 years with UW Hospital. So, um, you know, during my formative years, I watched her be a big part of this campus and saw what she did on this campus. I went to UW M so I am an alum. And then I left the state for about six years. And then I returned and when I returned, I joined UW Hospital. And at that time, you know, UW hospital was part of campus it was before it became a public authority. So I spent 17 years there during that time. It transitioned to the public authority, and then moved to this current role a little over 12 years ago. So most of my career has been at UW Madison.

Troy Reeves 02:00I put my mic on mute so I don't get background noise. So occasionally, you'll see my lips move, and I will realize that I'm on mute. So that's one of the things I still quite haven't figured out about remote

Kim Beld 02:11I can apprecite that.

Troy Reeves 02:13Is when to when to unmute. So thank you. Thank you for that overview. I appreciate that. So if you could talk a little bit about what factors led to your, to your work and research interests now. And if there's anything I feel I'd like to follow up about, I certainly will.

Kim Beld 02:30Sure. So as a department administrator for orthopedics and rehabilitation, you know, I really work work to support the those two physician groups, the rehab medicine physicians and the orthopedic surgeons, and, you know, really what, what led me there was very early on, I was always interested in exercise I was interested in well being in health, again, related to watching my mother be a physician back in the day. So she was a really terrific role 00:03:00model for me back in the 70s and 80s When I was growing up, um, you know, seeing a strong female leader in a, in a, in a profession that was male dominated, you know, back in a time where that just did not happen. So I always knew I wanted to be something like that. I wanted to be a strong female leader, I was drawn to healthcare because just my personal interests in well being and exercise. And so, you know, I, I, my undergraduate degree was in exercise physiology, I have a master's in exercise physiology. So I'd always gone into like the exercise side of, of well being in health care, and then eventually went back and get an MBA so that I could do the administrative work, but I really, it's just been a lifelong interest. And then also the role modeling that I saw in my mother.

Troy Reeves 03:59Kim, had you been doing administrative type work before you went back to get your MBA?

Kim Beld 04:05I had not, I'd been doing patient care.

Troy Reeves 04:09So it sounds like then it was a conscious decision for you to, to add to that to your skill set, then.

Kim Beld 04:17It really was and that, you know, thank you for that follow up. It really was because, you know, when I was doing patient care, there were so many times where I would look at either a process or something we were doing and thinking I think this could be done better. And and I always wanted to explore, you know, how could we look at this differently? Or how can we approach something differently, whether it was a problem or a process, um, and in my role, it really just didn't lend my you know, the role didn't lend itself to being in the position to to take action on those ideas. And so I really I went back to school and got my MBA specifically so I could find myself in a role where I could influence those types of things, improving a process, making a decision, looking at things differently. So really pursued that very intentionally.

Troy Reeves 05:15So then were you doing your graduate work, your MBA, specifically graduate work while you were working full time?

Kim Beld 05:23Yes.

Troy Reeves 05:26So, can you just kind of take me through how that went? You know, I did mine as a, you know, 22 year old, so I didn't really have other things going on. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about being a getting this done? Whilst?

Kim Beld 05:40Yeah, it was, you know, I did, I have two master's degrees. So I did my first one similar to you when I was, you know, right out of I graduated from undergraduate and then went right into grad school and got my masters and exercise physiology and, and understood what that looked like and felt like, and then years later, went back and got my MBA, and I was working full time, I was 00:06:00working at UW Hospital, full time, I was seeing patients, I was also, um, my three children, one of which, when I started the MBA, was one year of age. And I was the major breadwinner in our household. So my husband worked, but at a job that really wouldn't have paid all the bills. And I made more than him. So I was the major breadwinner. So the, there was no option to go either part time at work or not work and get my MBA, I had to do that. And so by the time I finished, my daughter was five, and she still remembers, she would sit on my lap, and I would have a textbook, and I'd be reading to myself and I would be highlighting, you know, things in the textbook. And she still remembers that and, and we talk about it to this day, she's 28 year old woman now. But we talked about how I could color in my books, but she couldn't. And we would try to explain the reason why. But I did that. I was very proud of that work, just because it did teach my children like at any point your life, you can go back and learn.

Troy Reeves 07:22That's great. Thank you for that. So the next question is, I assume you get asked, you know, how, what you do? But if you don't, if this is the first time anyone's ever asked you how do you describe what you do?

Kim Beld 07:39And I love that question. Because it is really, it's actually really hard to answer in some ways. I get asked that question a lot and people, even my children say, Mom, I still don't get what you do. And what I tell people is that I really I lead a remarkable group of physicians of advanced care providers, and a really talented administrative team. And we all work together to achieve our tripartite mission, right, clinical care, research and medical education. And really, I think my main focus is to really be a facilitator. Be someone who can liaison be someone who can remove barriers, and someone who can problem solve. I mean, really, at the end of the day, that's what I do. I'm under the umbrella of any one of our missions, right? It may be clinical care may be researcher may be medical education, that I'm facilitating something or removing a barrier. But all day long, that's pretty much what I do is I think I facilitating either a process or a problem more, or I'm removing a barrier, that sort of thing.

Troy Reeves 09:00Okay, I think I understood that. So no, I did. So next 00:09:00question, then is understanding that there's really never anything like a typical day. But you know, what sort of tasks comprise what might be a typical day for you?

Kim Beld 09:24And you're right, there's no there's no one size fits all typical day. I will tell you. I'm meeting-ed to death. So I'm in meetings and meetings and meetings. That's one thing I do but really, no, I'll take yesterday, for example, yesterday, part of the day I spent with my chairman, and we were kind of updating our strategic plan dusting it off, especially after this interesting year with a pandemic and and most of our kind of what I would call normal things put on hold because we were grappling with the pandemic. So we dusted off our Strategic Plan yesterday and, and in, looked at it in and made some updates. And our-- that's an ongoing discussion. We didn't finish that yesterday. But that was a piece, I spent some time getting emergency credentialing for one of our new advanced practice providers who we really need her to start sooner rather than later. And we had the barrier of all the credentialing process. And so I negotiated with several stakeholders to say, you know, can can we please speed this up, and maybe just even entertain emergency credentials so that we can get this person treating patients. So we got that done, I partnered with one of our research PI's regarding modifications to his lab, we have to remodel the lab that he's working in so that it meets the biosafety standards, based on the work that he's doing. So we needed to problem solve some of the remodeling issues that we're running into, so we did that. And I joined my Graduate Medical Education Program Manager yesterday for some orientation, with our new medical residents that joined us on I think, was June 24, or 25th. This year, our new residents came on board. So we did some orientation with them yesterday. So you know, really that, that was one day in time, but but that's the flavor of the day. And so I'm usually touching each mission a little bit each day, and really trying to solve problems or move initiatives forward.

Troy Reeves 11:44Thank you, maybe a follow up to that. And it may be impossible to quantify. And I'm actually just thinking of this question, as I'm trying to formulate it is how much of the work is like, you know, when you wake up what you're going to be doing, and how much of the work is you walk in, and something 00:12:00has happened, or something's going on, that you didn't know about and you have to react to that?

Kim Beld 12:08And you read that so well, because the I would tell you the majority of what I do each day is not pre planned. Um, you know, I was kind of joking at the beginning of my answer about I'm meeting-ed to death. And so the meetings typically are pre planned. That said many times, I end up cancelling meetings with very short notice, because there's some sort of issue or concern that takes priority for the rest of the day. And so that schedule, that schedule gets changed, and in kind of real time and we're addressing whatever issue is in front of me. So I would I really think a good 80% of the time, is I'm reacting, which I'm not necessarily proud of because, you know, really, if you're a good leader, and good at what you do, you should be more proactive. So I worked very hard at that. That said, you know, it's it's like what came up yesterday, right? The orientation was planned, I knew I needed to sit with our residents and, and participate in the orientation, the remodel issue. Um, you know, the biosafety team came in and said, oh, we have prom here, here, here. My PI called me in a panic saying, Kim, I thought this was done. I thought we did it right. Now they're telling me this, I can't start my research my robot's coming. You know, early next week, how are we going to get that installed? It was like, okay, one one thing at a time, we will we will solve these problems. And we did, you know, and a lot of it was it was a lot of it-- and I think this happens a lot of times, right? This it's we all work with very complicated things, and very complicated. Um, what's the word I'm looking for? The environments we work in are complex. So the research that he's doing is very complex. That said, the biosafety standards are very complex. And he the PI, the researcher, who's going to do this research isn't the expert on the bio safety policies and standards. So a lot of a lot of the problem yesterday was just this lack of understanding the communication. So he was asked a question, he answered it, the interpretation by the people receiving the answer was like, oh, then that doesn't meet our standard. And so when we all took a deep breath and regrouped and talk later, it was like, oh, that okay, actually, that isn't a problem that doesn't meet our standards. So it's really taking that, that time to slow down and really understand what we're all saying to each other. So that was not planned at all. You know, today, I'm dealing with a refrigerator. You know, we're trying to move a refrigerator from one location to another for a PI it is 00:15:00apparently lost on some truck. And so we're trying to locate it right now. Um, you know, so those things come up all day every day. And I think, you know, I have a very strong team, who works very hard to solve those problems by themselves. And when they feel like it's escalated to a certain point, they call me in, and then we all work to some of that. So, yeah, I would say a majority of my day is unplanned.

Troy Reeves 15:29Alright, again, thank you for that. So now I want to talk about two, an overarching change and a recent change. So the first is, you know, you've been doing this work for a while, and how have changes in technology, change what you do?

Kim Beld 15:47I think that's so hard to quantify, in some ways because it changes, it has changed so rapidly, and it changes in all aspects, not just not just what I do personally, like, um, but, you know, within our departments, so. And what I mean by that is this, so we have robots that treat patients. So when I first started in my role, we didn't have any robots. Technology has changed, we now have robots that help us place replacement joints in people with greater accuracy. Um, but I had to learn about all that. And then I had to advocate and be a part of the team that took that to the technology committee at UW Hospital, who doesn't just let any technology walk through its door, and we had to sell to that, to that committee, the merits of bringing in this robot, which was one new and didn't have a lot of evidence base behind it, it had clinical studies, but not real life data Two it was very expensive. Three, it took up a lot of space. So you know, that's one example of in the patient care environment. The technologies change all the time. And really, as an academic medical center, we want to be on the cutting edge of this, we really have to understand that early on and be early adopters of, of the technology and really be able to articulate why this technology is something that we should bring here and and use for our patients. I referenced just in my previous answer the robot for my PI. So we have that it's a different robot, it's a different type of technology is doing a whole different thing. But we've got this other robot that one of my PIs needs to use to recreate forces on joints so that we can create different forces on joints, see what the joint does. See what causes that joint to break down? So at 00:18:00what force does that ACL actually tear? Um, and so then that, once we know those things, then we can develop treatments, or clinical applications, or different types of tools to help mitigate those problems in the joint. Right? So it's understanding that technology and keeping again up to speed on what is the latest, greatest, latest and greatest technology in the research space. So we are on the cutting edge, front line of innovative research. And then you go down to just kind of the tools that I specifically use, which is what we're doing here today on a zoom call, you know, in the in the last year, and I think that's part of the next question, the last year, those types of technologies have changed rapidly, in light of the pandemic. So um always trying to keep up to date on how we can do our work more efficiently and effectively, especially because I'm working with a bunch of physicians who spend their time in an OR or in a clinic. So meeting with them face to face isn't always the best mode to do to conduct meetings because they might be across town in an OR I might be in an office, yet we need to get together to discuss issues. So you know, finding the best ways and the most effective and efficient ways to do that. We're always looking for those types of solutions.

Troy Reeves 19:40So before it moved to COVID question about technology, and that's the change or perhaps there's no the change in how you receive an analyze data. And I mean, mainly not necessarily for the doctors that you work with, but for you particularly being able to have perhaps easier access to information than you did when you first started.

Kim Beld 20:12Great question. Yes. So, you know, when I first started, really, um, I would need to wait for a report from somebody else that somebody else generated, right. So whether it was a budget report, whether it was a clinic volume report, or how many surgeries has Dr. X completed, some of that was on still mostly Excel spreadsheet type, someone was the steward of all that data, I would have to request that data from them and wait for them to generate the report and send it to me. Today, mostly, everything's in a dashboard. So I can just go to those dashboards, run my own report. And, and access that data at any time on any day that I want to, because it's always sitting there available. So 00:21:00I have much more access to data at my fingertips, and I can customize what I'm looking at. Um, that would be one big change the other big change is historically, we could always look retrospectively, and there was usually anywhere between a month to six months delay in data. So if I today ask for report, I might be able to get a report that would tell me everything for the first half of the fiscal year, you know, July to December of 2020. But they were still working on getting data from January to June here in July, because the data lagged a good six months. Today, most of those dashboards that I can access, have data fed into them, literally overnight. So I can usually get data all the way up until the previous day. I think the biggest lag I have right now in data is one month.

Troy Reeves 22:15Thank you. Okay, so I now want to move to something you alluded to, and I alluded to the beginning is that we are still in the midst of a global pandemic as we do this oral history interview. So it's a it's a broad question. But however you choose to focus on how the COVID-19 global pandemic changed and has changed your work.

Kim Beld 22:38I think, you know, as I reflect on that, it turns it really it turned my work upside down, and it turned it upside down for a couple different reasons. One, initially, it turned it upside down. Because, literally, you know, my part of my job, right is our physicians need to see patients, that's what we do, we want patients in the door, we want to treat them and care for them. We want more patients to come to us because we really do believe that we deliver remarkable care, cutting edge technology care, state of the art care. And so we're very proud of that. And we want patients to come and early on in the pandemic, the health system decided because there was the potential for a surge of patients, there was also the concern about people being out and about. We didn't-- there were stay at home orders. So we didn't want patients out and about we wanted them to comply with stay at home orders. So we basically told all patients to stay home. And we emptied the house system of any non essential care. So clearly, if someone needed emergency urgent type of care, we wanted them to come. The vast majority of what my doctors do is is elective. So you 00:24:00know you can live with a joint that has a lot of arthritis in it, it causes some disability for you, it causes pain, yet you can live with it, it's not an emergency to get your knee replaced. Um, and so we, for all intents and purposes, pushed all business back out the door and said, Don't come. Don't come for a while. And in all of my 30 years in healthcare, we've never tell patients don't come and please, we're gonna cancel everything. And just please don't come. So as you can imagine our systems and our processes don't work that way. So in very short order, we had to flip our processes upside down and move everybody out. And we had to do that in a way that didn't create panic or upset to the or as or as minimal upset as we could to patients. We had to explain to them that yes, while we're delaying your care, this is not impacting your long term outcome in a negative way that we will care for you when we can, and you will still have a good outcome, this delay won't hurt you. And so really telling people, or canceling you, we're getting out you out of the system, we're going to put you kind of in this holding pattern, we'll, we'll come back when it's safe, um, has just never been done. I don't think maybe since 1918, when they had the Spanish flu, but it just hasn't been done. And so, um, we had to flip our systems on their heads and, and make that all happen in a very short period of time, and then figure out how do you safely, efficiently, effectively bring back everybody in a trickle. Because that's what we did, we kind of trickled people back in. Um, so just working at the system level, and turning that upside down was really difficult and really challenging. And, and was really long and drawn out, right, because we sent everyone home. And then once we turned the switch back on, it wasn't a full on switch, it was a trickle in. So and we're still not we you know, we've changed some things permanently, we have telemedicine visits that we never had before. So we see a proportion, I'd say today, we're still between 18 and 20% of all of our visits are done via a telemedicine type of option, where zero, were done pre COVID. So in a 14 month span of time, we took a new technology, all the way from inception to execution and have 20% of our patients doing that, we've never been able to do something that quickly of that magnitude before. Um, I think on a more personal level and more at my team level, we did something similar, right, within 48 hours, we had 00:27:00everybody work from home. So we we are mostly an in person work environment, our the culture of our department is one of collaboration and teamwork and collegiality. And so we've always been an in person type of shop. And in 48 hours, we figured out how to get everyone functional at home. Um, and said, your home until the stay at home orders, you know, go away, or whatever that look like we all though. And I actually have been having these conversations with my team of late. You know, I've said, you know, when we went home in March of 2020, how long did you think we'd be working from home? And the answer is range, of course. But they range from weeks to a couple of months. And really, no one has said more than a couple of months. And here we are a good 15, 16 months later. And we're all still working from home. So it's really turned, how we do our work upside down we, we historically did a lot of things by committee in groups, I am a strong believer that as many minds as you can get around the table, the better because one mind doesn't think of everything. And so we make a lot of decisions and, and, and implement different processes by committee. And, and it's much harder to do that in a remote environment. Even if everyone's on a zoom call or WebEx call the dynamic in the room, so to speak, is just completely and utterly different. And so it's it's been a challenge to engage the team, like we normally have, when we were all in person, it was much easier to engage everyone in much easier to kind of have you know, I guess I guess what I have equated is when when you get a group of people in the room, and they're all problem solving and thinking and sharing ideas, there's some energy there, they there's some physical energy in that room. And when you all do that same type of brainstorming via a virtual environment, that energy that that kind of naturally starts to percolate in that room just doesn't happen because we're all sitting in a separate room and and so, we have felt that we have felt that that has been a challenge.

Troy Reeves 29:33So now I want to move from your work to well, still your work but talking more about specifically being academic staff. So the first question is, were you or have you been involved in academic staff governance or groups?

Kim Beld 29:48I have not historically, um, which, you know, when I saw that question, I was like, hmm, I really need to investigate that more and get more involved because that's probably something that should be more than on my radar, but I just historically have not done that.

Troy Reeves 30:03Okay, well, that makes that follow up question moot.

Kim Beld 30:07Yeah.

Troy Reeves 30:08 So now let's move to a general question about if you've thought about the relationship between faculty and staff, and if you so if you have, what are your thoughts about that relationship?

Kim Beld 30:20You know, we do talk about that, um, especially when it comes to my physicians, because, you know, technically speaking, so I have physicians, they are on one of three tracks, they are either on the tenure track, and those that are on the tenure track are considered faculty in the eyes of the university, I have some that are on the clinical, or clinician health sciences track, this, what we call the CHS track for short. And those folks are academic staff. And then I have faculty or, excuse me, physicians who are on the clinical teacher track CT track for short. And they are academic staff. Yeah, we talk about we, in our clinical department, talk about faculty in in a global sense, that's not accurate, if you will, to the campus's definition. So all of our physicians, we consider a faculty and we call them faculty. So we have this kind of unique relationship, because we really treat those faculty members who are those, let me say this better we treat our physicians, actually a small minority of who are actual faculty in the eyes of the campus, we treat them all as if they are faculty. Um, so it's very interesting in the School of Medicine, public health has this interesting relationship, because that's, that's kind of their direction, right? That all of those folks are treated as faculty. Um, yet, when it comes down to certain things like promotion, we definitely follow the promotion process for tenured faculty, just like any other tenured faculty on the campus, then promotion for our other academic staff positions, they go through a similar type of promotion process, but it's not tied to the university processes. It's tied to a internal process at the School of Medicine, public health. Um, so when it comes down to those types of things, we very much follow faculty versus academic staff rules and regulations, and so to speak, but, but for the most part, we blur those lines, all the time, when it comes to our physicians. So it's really it's an it's an interesting dynamic, and it's an interesting environment to be in. And you really have to understand when you're 00:33:00kind of working within the definition that the School of Medicine has put forth, or whether you're working within the definition of campus. So I think about it quite a bit, actually, but probably in a way that most people don't think about it. Um, so that's one perspective. The other is, you know, really, um, my true faculty, my, my, the folks that are faculty versus academic staff in our department, we really work very well together. And really, in our day to day work, there's just no no definition or no. We're not put into any camp, if you will, we're not this is this is an academic staff person. This is a faculty member, this is a university staff person, we don't really think in that way, or use that lingo in any way. We really, I think, our group really has mutual respect and trust and admiration for each other. And it doesn't matter what role you serve, or how you're employed. It's really that we all understand the value that each individual in our department brings to the table. And that's really what the focus is on.

Troy Reeves 34:32All right. Thank you again. So now, I would like to get the story behind the winning of the awards, you won the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in leadership at the individual unit level. So, you know, as much as you'd like to talk about from the nomination through the reception.

Kim Beld 34:52Well, I would say I was very honored and humbled when my nominators, I had three people on my department nominated me, my chairman, our Senior Vice Chair, and then a faculty member nominated me and when they approached me, they did approach me in advance and said, we would like to nominate you, we would like your help and pulling together the packet, they needed my resume and, and for the, for the nomination packet. So I was very, very humbled, and really just the nomination itself was very impactful for me, um, you know, I really see myself, I guess I should say, my expectation for myself is, you know, really, in any role that I perform, that I really work hard that I do my best that I make decisions and choices that really are in the best interest of who I'm serving, right, whether it's the department or the school, or the institution, that's, that's, that's what my focus needs to be on, I don't 00:36:00have a personal agenda or personal ego in there, I shouldn't in my role I need to represent the school and the department and the institution. So I work hard to make my choices that way. And I really hold myself to a, you know, a strong accountability, I need to get things done, I need to deliver on what I've promised, I'm going to deliver on I need to do it in a timely way, I need to do it in an effective way. I need to be professional, and I need to be a compassionate leader. Um like, that's just my personal standards. And so, to me, when I'm doing those things, I'm meeting basic expectations, and I'm doing the job that I was asked to do. And so when they said they wanted to nominate me for those things, I thought, well, that's awesome. And, and I'm so honored. And yet I feel like that's just what I'm supposed to do every day. And I look around and see a lot of people, either my peers who work just as hard as I do. And I see my team, who if the only reason I'm successful is because the team helps me be successful. So to be singled out, was a little uncomfortable for me. Because I don't think I do anything individually. It's the team that really, really does all the work. So we together do it. So but so humbled and so grateful for their nomination, and then was equally as honored and humbled to actually win the award. I thought the reception was so well done and so meaningful, I really congratulate the the organizers who developed that program, and then you know, executed that, in this virtual environment, I'm sure that was a first for them. Yet, being a participant in it, it felt like they had done it a million times before they really did such a nice job. Um, it still felt intimate, you know, which is really hard one with a large group, but two in this virtual environment, yet, they managed to pull that off. And they made space and room for each individual award winner to have their moment to shine. So I just can't say enough about that reception and how well they did.

Troy Reeves 38:33Great. Thank you. So before I get to the final question, which is really, do you have anything else to say I do want to, I do want to since we have a minute or two talk to you about gender. It's not easy for me as a white man to ask questions of things I really don't know much about. But, you know, you have gotten yourself into a position of leadership on this campus as a 00:39:00woman. And I know you talked earlier about having a strong role model in your mom that helped you but I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about being a woman on this campus and how how you've dealt with having how you've dealt with that?

Kim Beld 39:18Yeah. Thank you for asking. That's a great question. I think, you know, um, I personally feel that I have been afforded opportunities. While on this campus, I have not felt that my gender has ever held me back. So I'm very proud of this campus for that. I think they work hard to be an inclusive campus and and that you know, equity of any sort gender or racial or any other equity, I think is at the forefront of a lot of people's minds on this campus. I think there's dialogue on this campus, we have no doubt have work to do. Yet the conversation is, is started and it's there. And so I have been very lucky not to have felt like my gender has held me back on this campus. That said, one of the I do want to share, one of the things I'm most proud of, in my time in this role, has been the change in the gender complement of our orthopedic surgeons. So when I started in my role 12 and a half years ago, we had zero, we had no female faculty. We had all male orthopedic surgeons on this campus. And I had worked in my role for a couple of years, when I sat one day with my chairman, who said to me, I'm so frustrated Kim, we matched our residents for the next year. And again, we did not match a female, we have been trying to match females, we matched five white males. That's not that's great. But that's not what we want some females and we want some gender equity, we want some racial equity. So my immediate response to him, which was a little, admittedly, maybe a little flippant, was, well, they don't see themselves here. And he said, What do you mean by that, and I said, you have white male faculty. That's it. That's what we have here. Females don't see themselves here, African Americans don't see themselves here, the list goes on. So I said, we're not going to start 00:42:00matching those people until they see themselves here. And so on that day, we said, okay, our first, our first because we have a lot of work to do. So our first goal will be gender, let's get females to join us. So it took us five years, but we went from zero, female faculty to now 24% of our orthopedic surgeons are women. Nationally, only 6% of Orthopedic Surgeons are female. So we worked really, really hard to increase that number. And with the exception of this year, which I just don't understand. After that, once we, we didn't have to wait till we got to 24%. But once we started the change in added female faculty, we started to match female residents. So we've actually gotten to the point two years and not in a row. But two years, we had 50% of our class being females, our resident class this year, it's 100% male. I'm not sure how we fell off the train this last year, but um, we've done a good job with the exception of this past year of matching females. And so now we're, we're shifting our sights on on more racial diversity in our ranks. But I've been very proud of that accomplishment.

Troy Reeves 43:41Yeah, that's great. Okay, so we have a few minutes left. And the last question is, is there anything else you'd like to talk about? Or to share about your time at UW?

Kim Beld 43:52Just would say that, you know, I really I truly have spent and not all of it was technically as a UW Madison employee, as I alluded to earlier, I started out at UW Hospital when when employees there were state employees, and then that shifted, but I started at UW Hospital this November will be 30 years ago and I've stayed stayed working here all that time. And I I stay here because I'm so proud to be associated with this campus and this health system I think this campus is a very special place and the people are at the heart of what makes it special and it's just been an honor and privilege to work here and I so enjoy it and I I can't imagine that I would go anywhere else. I will likely end my career here. Because I just can't imagine leaving such a special place.

Troy Reeves 44:56Well, I think that's a good spot to end I do want to talk to you for a minute after I stop the recording but this this will now conclude the 00:45:00oral history with Kim Beld. Kim thank you for your time I appreciate it.

Kim Beld 45:07 Thank you, Troy