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Sandra Maislen sees parallels between tango and work. |
Sandra Maislen, administrative director for Children's Hospital Boston's Division of Developmental Medicine, hasn't taken a sick day in five years. "There's never been a day that I've said I don't want to go to work," she says. "I get up and I'm excited to come here. Every day, I feel like we're advancing something that's powerful and important."
Developmental Medicine houses the Development Medicine Center (DMC), a clinical unit that evaluates and treats children with developmental, behavioral and learning difficulties, from Down syndrome to autism. Maislen became personally connected with these issues in the early 1990s when her son, Adam, then in third grade, was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) by a developmental behavioral fellow working at Children's. "I had been having an incredibly difficult time accessing services and getting him the help he needed," she recalls. "School was a torment for everyone concerned. As a parent, it was so isolating because I didn't know anyone else whose child had ADD. There wasn't a huge amount of information out at that time and I felt really alone."
At the time, Maislen was working in the heath care field, having earned a master's degree from Harvard's School of Public Health in the 1980s. After her experience with her son, she hoped that she would one day work with families and children with developmental problems and improve their access to services. In 2003, Maislen got her chance when she became the first administrative director in the DMC.
Her position requires an enormous amount of dedication, and when she compiled her to-do list on her first day, some of the tasks (including hiring a research director) took more than a year to complete. But Maislen has the focus, drive and patience to sift through these tasks—attributes she attributes to her favorite hobby: tango dancing.
On top of her frenetic work life, Maislen has a true passion for the art of tango. She began dancing at a young age, but stopped for 20 years after her children were born. About five years ago, she hit the dance floor again, taking classes and dancing up to five times a week. "Tango is challenging because you're figuring out how to move your body and execute a certain step—and it's incredibly intellectually stimulating," she says.
Maislen has discovered a surprisingly large number of likeminded people in the medical field that also dance tango, including her practice partner, who is pursuing his cardiac fellowship at another hospital in Boston. Maislen clearly sees parallels between medicine and tango. "You have to have a mind that can think scientifically, mathematically and conceptually," she says, adding that just like in the medical field, you must work hard to make incremental steps. She enjoys having clear goals, pushing her limits and watching herself progress in dance, just as with her work. "Tango reminds you that you have to be humble, and you recognize that you can learn a lot from others," she says.
Maislen also employs tango as a form of relaxation, which is well-deserved, considering the headway that the DMC has made under her watch. Last year, Developmental Medicine became a whole new division at Children's—the first to be added in more than 15 years. "Tango is a release for me," Maislen says. "When I dance I don't think about anything else. I'm listening to the music, I'm listening to my partner, I'm listening to the other dancers and I am dancing—I'm just completely in the moment."
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