Ahighly experienced Center Director with a demonstrated history of working in the education management industry, Vina Vaswani has 27 years associated with Clinical Forensic Medicine, Clinical Toxicology, and Medicolegal autopsy. She has five years of expertise and teaching in Forensic Anthropology and 11 years of teaching and research in Bioethics Education, Medical Ethics, and Clinical Ethics. She is a Ph.D. holder from Dublin City University with several publications to her credit.

Currently, Vina is leading the first ethics-dedicated center in a medical college in India reawakening medical ethics and bioethics in the healthcare setting, through academic programs, research, and cultural exchanges. She is helping sensitize medical students to be compassionate and develop an understanding of issues in the global context. Let’s hear it from her.

How has your prior experience equipped you to become a better education management professional?

As teachers, people should be able to eradicate dichotomy and emulate sincerity while being able to walk the talk. I found that being transparent, accountable, and hardworking is very important in this profession. I have also realized that every decade has a challenge before us and we have to constantly be changing it to suit the needs of society and tune in with the language the society uses to educate the younger generation. I can't afford to be a stickler for what I believed 10 years ago. There is a changing philosophy and we have to move according to that. Hence, as a teacher, the best thing is to be a constant learner. I have been constantly looking for opportunities to enrol in different courses and continue to learn because I believe I have always been a student as much as a teacher.

Briefly introduce us to Yenepoya University. Also, tell us about the different responsibilities that you shoulder as the Director.

When I joined Yenepoya University, my question was, I have so much skill and talent, how can I fashion it in a way that a single seed of my ambition becomes a tree that steers people and the organization in a common direction? I had many visions - I needed to start meaningful courses that are not taught and needed to provide skills that were a part of the contemporary requirement but not covered as a part of the curriculum. I first joined as a professor in forensic medicine, and then over a period of time, I also was given supervisory responsibilities that had a lot of confidence vested in me to even pursue higher education. I went to Europe to do my MA in Bioethics. I came back and made ethics the medium through which every education content curriculum flowed. We started conducting various academic programs leading to awareness, empowerment, and training of healthcare professionals keeping ethics at the center. Furthermore, to be able to perform at a global level, I got myself trained in South Korea in Disaster Victim Identification, and then started the Post Graduate Diploma in Forensic Anthropology & Odontology.

What are some of the most critical challenges you encounter as an education management professional? How do you overcome them?

The medical curriculum is richly overloaded and for students, taking out time for value-added courses beyond academics is quite a challenge. Also, some students are willing to enrol themselves in our value-based programs but are not able to afford them. For them, we have scholarships that cater to their interests. Managing these two aspects – time and finance – has been our real challenge. The whole challenge has been how best we can create leaders because without creating sustainable leadership, the subject, curriculum, aspiration, students, and their degrees won't survive.

"The whole challenge has been how best we can create leaders because without creating sustainable leadership, the subject, curriculum, aspiration, students, & their degrees won't survive"

What has been your success mantra?

I began my journey in this profession with a simple vision - to be a teacher who can inspire others. The challenge with teaching the present generation is not the content. They can get the content from anywhere. But as teachers, we have to inspire, we have to show them the different ways they can envisage their dreams. So, for that, we needed to be good communicators. I believe the success of the cake depends not on the cream and sugar, but on the baking powder - just a pinch of it in the right concentration makes the cake rise. Similarly, sometimes we are not able to communicate better because we are not using the skills required. So, to me, it's important that I understand my students’ challenges, what they're expecting to learn, and how to inspire them.

What advice would you give to aspiring women leaders?

For leaders to be successful in their field, they need to have good role models. And when they have a role model, if they go through their life story, they will not only be inspired but also experience the troubles their role models faced. This will help them understand that troubles are not unique only to them, it's a global phenomenon. Many a time we look at the bend in the road and think it is the end of the road. But we need to continue on and by going on we find that we have reached where we always wanted to be.

Vina Vaswani, Director Centre For Ethics Professor Forensic Medicine, Yenepoya University

An alumnus of BITS Pilani with an M.Phil in Hospital and Health Systems Management, Dr. Vaswani is a qualified bioethicist with a background in Forensic Medicine & Toxicology. She completed her MA in Bioethics as an Erasmus Mundus scholar from three European Universities (Belgium, Netherlands, and Italy). She also has postgraduate diplomas in Medical Law & Ethics and Human Rights Law, both from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. Her PhD was from Dublin City University in the interdisciplinary fields of ethics and forensic medicine and disasters. She is successfully running the First Research Ethics Masters Program for India supported by a grant from National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA.