People often ask me how I would describe my career in a single word. After much thought I have settled on one: building.
I have spent more than three decades building — surgical techniques, educational programs, hospitals, international collaborations, careers, and ideas. Every chapter in this archive is part of the same story: a lifetime spent trying to leave things better than I found them.
The pages that follow are not a résumé. They are closer to a long letter — written for surgeons in training, for patients, for entrepreneurs, for my children, for the grandchildren who will one day read this last.
Whenever I encountered a problem, I never asked whether someone else would solve it. I asked whether I could help build the solution.
This is the story of how that habit began, where it took me, and what I hope it leaves behind.