Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Michelle Lewis, orig­i­nal­ly from Co­corite, has sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed the pub­lic health­care sys­tem in New York City.

Re­cent­ly, her achieve­ments were recog­nised by Schneps Me­dia, which named her one of the “Pow­er Women of Man­hat­tan 2024”. As a dis­tin­guished health­care ad­min­is­tra­tor, Ms Lewis has been re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant ad­vance­ments for NYC Health + Hos­pi­tals, chart­ing the strate­gic di­rec­tion of Gotham Health, one of the largest fed­er­al­ly qual­i­fied health cen­tres in the Unit­ed States.

Ms Lewis, the el­dest of six chil­dren, was ed­u­cat­ed in Trinidad, at­tend­ing Cor­pus Christi Col­lege at the sec­ondary lev­el. She re­mem­bers hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time in school, fail­ing the Com­mon En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion, and the con­fu­sion of her fam­i­ly and teach­ers around her as to why she was not able to ex­cel. Re­call­ing that her moth­er nev­er gave up on her, she re­mained ded­i­cat­ed to seek­ing re­sources that could help her through­out her aca­d­e­m­ic ca­reer.

Af­ter get­ting mar­ried, Ms Lewis mi­grat­ed to New York and was sub­se­quent­ly di­ag­nosed with dyslex­ia, mean­ing that the ped­a­gog­ic in­struc­tion in T&T which is not geared to dyslex­ic chil­dren was fail­ing her.

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing with her Bach­e­lor’s De­gree in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence and a Mas­ter’s De­gree in Pub­lic Health, she joined New York Pres­by­ter­ian Health Sys­tems, where she be­gan as a clerk. By the time she left NY Pres­by­ter­ian, Ms Lewis over­saw three emer­gency rooms and moved in­to the Am­bu­la­to­ry Care Health Cen­ter. It was dur­ing this pe­ri­od that her strong in­ter­est in de­liv­er­ing high-qual­i­ty health­care ser­vices peaked, and she de­vel­oped a pro­cliv­i­ty to sup­port the well-be­ing of the med­ical­ly un­der­served com­mu­ni­ty–in­clud­ing mi­grants and mar­gin­alised in­di­vid­u­als.

Cur­rent­ly, Ms Lewis is the CEO of NYC Health and Hos­pi­tals/Gotham Health, where she has served for the past six years, over­see­ing 30 health cen­tres lo­cat­ed in all five bor­oughs in New York City. As Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Gotham Health has be­come the largest Fed­er­al­ly Qual­i­fied Health Cen­ter in the net­work of com­mu­ni­ty health cen­tres that is part of NYC Health + Hos­pi­tals, which is the largest pub­lic health­care sys­tem in the Unit­ed States.

Ms Lewis leads the or­gan­i­sa­tion with an ethos ded­i­cat­ed to ser­vice for all. “We nev­er say no to any­one who needs care,” she says. “Our health­care is on an equal foot­ing as pri­vate hos­pi­tals, but we ac­cept any­one re­gard­less of their abil­i­ty to pay or their im­mi­gra­tion sta­tus.”

She sug­gest­ed that of­ten­times, in many con­texts, when peo­ple talk about pub­lic health­care, it is ex­pect­ed to be “some rinky dink site, a hole in the wall with long wait times.” Her chal­lenge, which she has risen to and ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions, has been to trans­form the im­age of pub­lic health­care, to change neg­a­tive per­cep­tions of the po­ten­tial stan­dard of com­mu­ni­ty health­care ser­vices and to bridge the gap be­tween pub­lic and world-class health­care.

Ms Lewis has learnt a sig­nif­i­cant amount in her role out­side of health­care. “I’ve learned to be qui­et at times,” she says, jok­ing that learn­ing to be qui­et “is a strug­gle for us Tri­nis.” What she means, how­ev­er, is not that she is not forth­right and as­sertive, but that she bal­ances the po­lit­i­cal de­mands of her pub­lic role, en­sur­ing that she com­mu­ni­cates her mes­sages care­ful­ly based on her au­di­ence, com­mand­ing rel­e­vant at­ten­tion where need­ed.

She has al­so learnt about bal­ance. “In the be­gin­ning, it was 24/7 work, and I was ab­solute­ly con­sumed with my vi­sion and try­ing to ex­e­cute it.” How­ev­er, the jour­ney has taught her that tak­ing care of her­self is just as im­por­tant as tak­ing care of her com­mu­ni­ty.

Liv­ing in the Unit­ed States for the past 37 years has not tak­en the Tri­ni out of her, and she has tried to in­ter­twine the cul­tures to the ben­e­fit of her staff. In 2023, when she was about to trav­el home to see her grand­son, she fell down­stairs on the way to meet her await­ing taxi.

De­ter­mined to make it to T&T, she still got on her flight home and by the time she ar­rived, her foot was swollen and in pain. When she re­turned to NYC, she learnt that she had frac­tured three toes and her an­kle, and was or­dered to bed to rest and heal. Dur­ing her bed rest, for the first time in her life, Ms Lewis tuned in­to the Car­ni­val Pa­rade of the Bands, and watched, awed at the ju­bi­la­tion of the cel­e­bra­tion.

“Some­thing hap­pened in my soul, some­thing was re­cov­ered from my soul that I for­got about. All those years, Car­ni­val was the fur­thest thing from my mind, but see­ing it on TV was ab­solute­ly en­chant­i­ng.”

She then made it her mis­sion to spread her cul­ture amongst her staff and used Car­ni­val as a cen­tral point to craft her team-build­ing ex­er­cis­es at work. Now, she said, her team is en­gaged in every pa­rade in the city, play­ing so­ca mu­sic at every fes­ti­val and even her son is amazed that she has be­come a so­ca junkie.

While she is en­tranced by the rich­ness of T&T cul­tur­al­ly, she ac­knowl­edged that there is still a lot of work to be done in the health­care field. “Some of the prob­lems we have at home, you see every­where,” she says. “But what’s im­por­tant is how we deal with it.” Af­ter spend­ing time in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem in T&T with her ill moth­er, she cites that in­fra­struc­ture and equip­ment need at­ten­tion and up­grad­ing. Al­so, the lengthy wait times for ill peo­ple to get an ap­point­ment and the sub­se­quent wait for that ap­point­ment are detri­men­tal to peo­ple’s men­tal and phys­i­cal well-be­ing.

Most im­por­tant­ly, she en­cour­ages med­ical pro­fes­sion­als “to un­der­stand that health­care is a right, and the de­liv­ery of health­care should be done in a com­pas­sion­ate, whole­heart­ed and hu­mane way.”

Abid­ing by the mot­to, “to whom much is giv­en, much is ex­pect­ed,” Ms Lewis takes her re­cent awards–as one of the Pow­er Woman in Man­hat­tan and her Health Hero Award–in stride.

She sent her staff to col­lect the awards as she sees it as an ac­knowl­edge­ment of her team who has strived to build a rep­u­ta­tion of ex­cel­lence around the or­gan­i­sa­tion. She al­ways seeks to bring oth­er peo­ple along on her jour­ney, en­sur­ing that the en­tire­ty of the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty can achieve a greater good.

To all women, she says, “Hold on­to your vi­sion. Ig­nore the noise about what you should and shouldn’t be do­ing and stay the course.”