Hi.

Pablo Romano

I am a second-year psychiatry resident at Columbia. I grew up between the suburbs of Los Angeles and Guadalajara, Mexico and studied Cognitive Science at Occidental College.

When I started medical school, I was amazed and humbled to be in the same pool as my peers. The first few weeks were filled with eager conversations and new friendships, but as classes got increasingly difficult, that space began to disappear. So as a way of creating a community around sharing meaningful moments and getting to know one another, Laurel and I created a recurring storytelling series called Talk Rx, where students are given coaching and a platform to tell their stories, live and in front of an audience of peers.

Aside from learning to be a psychiatrist, I have been learning to write. For the past few years, I have used writing as way of understanding and telling my own story. Having lost both my parents while in college, I have found writing to be a means of processing my story and turning tragedy into meaning. I have been fortunate enough to share different versions of this story at several live storytelling events, including The Nocturnists, based in San Francisco. Other works can be found here.

When I’m not at the hospital, I divide my time between attending pop-punk concerts, new plays, spending time with friends looking for new places to eat, and trying to convince myself to go to the gym.

Laurel Braitman

I am a New York Times bestselling author and the Director of Writing and Storytelling at the Medical Humanities and the Arts Program at the Stanford School of Medicine where I have helped hundreds of physicians, clinical students and other healthcare professionals communicate more bravely and effectively.

I earned a PhD in Science, Technology and Society from MIT, and is a Senior TED Fellow. My own work lives at the intersection of science, nature, beauty and loss. And I like to combine the arts and sciences in ways that make people feel more curious about our world, more hopeful about our future and less alone. My new book What Looks Like Bravery: An epic journey from loss to love has just come out with Simon & Schuster. "An affecting investigation of loss, sorrow, and the search for meaning," according to Kirkus Reviews. My last book, Animal Madness, was a NYT bestseller and has been translated into eight languages.

I am also the founder of the global community of writing healthcare professionals, Writing Medicine, now in its third year. My work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Good Morning America and Al Jazeera. My writing has appeared in The Guardian, on Radiolab, in The Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Geographic and other publications.

Feel free to get in touch with me here or via instagram or on Facebook.