Dr. Christa-Marie Singleton
Chief Seat Arranger
SEATS AT THE TABLE COLLABORATIVE
Seats at the Table Collaborative was formed to coach, catalyze, and empower college or graduate women considering healthcare careers to move away from seats at mental and emotional tables that aren’t serving them.
Colleges/Universities
We Have a Seat for You!
Benefits of offering Seats at the Table TableTalkCollaborative group coaching program:
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Helps students self-discover hidden potentials needed for success
Shifts student mindsets’ to accelerate behavioral and performance changes they need to succeed in challenging healthcare fields
Improve student retention in desired healthcare programs
Improved retention = improved graduation rates
Improved graduation rates = improved future healthcare alumni
Hello!
My name is Dr. Christa-Marie Singleton, board-certified preventive medicine physician executive, as well as pediatric-trained public health expert
As a child I was a frequent visitor to my pediatrician’s office; repeated childhood illnesses, a round of stitches to the back of my head, and a shoulder injury from a mild car accident. At age 11, after watching my (female) pediatrician teach and heal me, I wanted to devote my life to helping other young people to heal.
So off I went on the path to my “dream“...steadily being the “good student”, being a “people pleaser” to my teachers and parents, spending all of my time trying to chase good grades...
I tied my entire self-worth into chasing academic awards - until I was told by the so-called academic experts that I wasn’t good enough to be admitted to the table of my dreams.
I was only allowing myself to eat crumbs that fell from the table. As a child of two teacher parents, to not do well in school, to receive bad grades was essentially starvation and a death sentence.
Literally. I went to a very dark space.
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To this day I am grateful for the hands that brought me back to the table and coached me through medical school, residency, graduate school, a career as a pediatrician and then a board-certified preventive medicine physician who also served as a public health leader.
But after finally reaching the table of my life’s dream of being a pediatrician I still kept hearing that I wasn’t good enough to be at a table.
That I didn’t “belong” at medicine’s table because I believed in a broader approach to healthcare.
That I was “confused” at policy tables because clinical medicine and public policy couldn’t be practiced at the same time.
That I was being uninvited to collaboration tables because I didn’t have the “right degree” or because “I had the wrong tone” for speaking up about the lived experiences of the communities in which I was so fortunate to work.
I then spent a large part of my 25 year career obtaining additional evidence-based training, coaching and certifications to “people-please” persons whom I thought “wouldn’t let me sit at the table” so that they would then find me worthy.
Fast forward to 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a world-wide shuffling of priorities.
One day I was sitting at my own dining room table, overworked, overweight, and realized that my own life table was on shaky ground. I also saw that my life dream of helping other young people be at their best needed a different table. And as our world was coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, I especially didn’t see a lot of women who looked like me at these tables.
I kept finding young women who were at broken tables or denied seats at the tables of their dreams because they weren’t able to access coaching support to avoid the same mindset errors, thought errors, insight errors, the syndrome of endless degree-chasing, and the lack of sponsorship that threatened to derail my life’s table.
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I didn’t want these highly intelligent, bright women to spend over 25 years before they reached their “aha” moment. Just like at age 11, I wanted to help other young people get to their table faster than I got to mine. I saw that my fellow young sisters were not able to access the benefit of coaching support in their college, graduate school, or early careers and were not being fed the necessary self-worth skills to be empowered leaders at their chosen tables.
Colleges/Universities
We Have a Seat for You!
Benefits of offering Seats at the Table TableTalkCollaborative group coaching program at your institution:
​
Helps students self-discover hidden potentials needed for success
Shifts student mindsets’ to accelerate behavioral and performance changes they need to succeed in challenging healthcare fields
Improved student retention in desired healthcare programs
Improved retention = improved graduation rates
Improved graduation rates = more future healthcare alumni
A recent CNN news article highlighted the current low numbers of physicians in the US (5.7%) who identify as Black or African American.
To help improve these enrollments, organizations are creating programs to recruit young persons at the elementary and middle school levels to pursue medical and healthcare careers.
But within all of these outstanding efforts to recruit more students of color, a 2022 paper by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that those who identified as an underrepresented race or ethnicity in medicine – such as Black or Hispanic – were than twice as likely to withdraw from or be forced out of school.​
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The researchers wrote in the study that “the findings highlight a need to retain students from marginalized groups in medical school.”
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Seats at the Table Collaborative ensures students KEEP their seat at the table!!!