Eric Goralnick attended the Naval Academy in Annapolis – effectively an intensive four-year leadership training course. While serving as a Surface Warfare Officer, he noticed the work the naval medical corpsmen did, “and and that really opened up my eyes that I could potentially pursue a career in medicine. The idea of solely focusing on the preservation of others was inspiring, and so that became my mission.”
Goralnick’s resume is deep, and deeply impressive: Naval Academy, medical degree from the University of Tel Aviv, residency at Yale, Master’s of Public Health from Harvard. Emergency physician and clinical director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Emergency Department. Chair of the Disaster Medicine Section of the American College of Emergency Physicians. A hundred published papers on emergency medicine and resiliency in health-care delivery. Medical director, Gillette Stadium.
There’s a good deal more, but the last item on his resume above all made him an optimal choice early this year, after former Secretary Jon Santiago departed to return to the practice of emergency medicine at Boston Medical Center – having brought the department out of the nightmarish repercussions of the state soldiers’ homes COVID disaster.
Goralnick was founding director of military and veterans initiatives at Mass. General Brigham, a center whose three core missions – advancing battlefield medicine, improving medical and emergency education in the defense sector, and bringing vets into the medical workforce – reflect a convergence of his greatest professional strengths and interests.
As he continues to learn the operation and people of his 837-person, $205 million secretariat – he’s in the process of meeting with every one of 351 Veterans Services Officers in local communities – Goralnick is preparing a strategic plan, that will likely align the needs of some of Massachusetts’ top industries – education, health care, high tech – with work the defense industry needs done and the jobs veterans looking for employment and training can do.
All of it comes back to the underlying theme of his career, and on a deeper level, his life: “My Hebrew school teacher, Edith Singer, was a Holocaust survivor, and she was interned in Auschwitz. And she told us about her experience, and she told us about how America opened its doors for her and her family, and I knew at that point. I needed to serve.”
And that knowledge drove his decision to leave the prestige of top-level Massachusetts health care management to the asperities of government service: “Well, I think it’s a remarkable opportunity to do some good. My DNA is service. And so the idea of being able to work as a public servant, to help lead and empower a team that’s focused on improving the lives of veterans in the Commonwealth – it’s a dream.”
== Craig Sandler, Mass. Almanac/SHNS