4 minute read
Breaking Down Barriers
BY MERRY SUE BAUM
It’s hard to imagine that Joanna Sesti, MD’09, a renowned thoracic surgeon, nearly failed third grade. It’s even more difficult to believe when you learn she is the first female ever to be appointed northern regional director of thoracic surgery for RWJBarnabas Health, and is also chief of thoracic surgery at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, NJ. Once you know her back story, however, it makes perfect sense.
Sesti, a native-born Cuban, emigrated to the U.S. with her family in 1989. They settled in Hudson County, NJ, and seven-year-old Sesti and her two brothers went off to school. Although some of the teachers were bilingual, Sesti’s third-grade teacher was not. “The language barrier made it very difficult for me to learn,” she recalls. “It was just sheer luck that I got through.”
It didn’t take long for Sesti to become proficient in her second language. She did well in school and like her older brother, was accepted at High Tech High School, a magnet school in North Bergen for students interested in careers in sciences or art. That’s where her AP biology teacher, Nina Lavlinskaia, PhD, inspired Sesti’s love of biology. Then as a junior at New York University (NYU), Sesti spent time doing lab work, which she found fascinating. That’s when she decided to become a physician-scientist. Her next stop would be at a medical school that could fulfill her dream.
NJMS was the first place she thought of, since it was close to home. During her interview and tour, she knew it was the place for her. “The students were doing a good deal of hands-on clinical training,” she says. “And I was very impressed with the physicians and teachers and the research that was being conducted.”
I donned a gown and gloves and when I walked into the OR, I thought, ‘This is for me.’ A feeling came over me and I knew I’d be happiest doing surgery.
Sesti was accepted into the MD/PhD program, with the idea of spending most of her time in the laboratory and practicing medicine on the side. That changed when she started her clinical rotations during her second year. She was intrigued with the interaction of hormones with the body in endocrinology, and she enjoyed the surgical aspect of gynecology. She thought of perhaps focusing on one of those specialties. It was the surgical rotation however, that clinched it. “I donned a gown and gloves, and when I walked into the OR, I thought, ‘This is for me,’” she says. “A feeling came over me, and I knew I’d be happiest doing surgery.” Later, observing a thoracic surgeon for the first time, she got that same feeling. “I was in awe as the surgeon opened the sternum and removed a large tumor,” she says. “That was what I wanted to do.” She dropped the PhD portion of the program.
Back at NYU after graduation from NJMS, Sesti completed a combined residency/ fellowship in general and cardiothoracic surgery. She then headed to the University of Pittsburgh, where she did a one-year advanced minimally invasive thoracic surgery fellowship under James D. Luketich, MD, a pioneer of minimally invasive esophageal surgery. While there, she got a call one day from a nurse practitioner she had worked with at NYU, who told her there was an opening for a thoracic surgeon at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center. She got the job and six years later was appointed chief of thoracic surgery and northern regional director.
“I’ve been so fortunate,” she says. “It seems trite to say this, but it took several strokes of good luck and simply being in the right place at the right time to get where I am. I’m so thankful to those who served as role models and to my parents who inspired me to take risks and dream. Not everyone gets to do what they love.”
