Thanks for visiting my blog. Looking for my exhaustive, way too detailed bio that someone convinced me to post? You’re in the right place. I am an emergency physician and the proud CEO and founder of Hippo Education. Hippo creates medical education for our growing and crystallizing community of doctors and other clinicians who are dedicated to living and taking care of patients in the best way they can. We focus on the people of healthcare, the clinicians and patients, rather than the system that seems so often to marginalize them. Hippo (like, Hippocrates) is not for everyone. We are creative, irreverent, and awake. If you’re part of our tribe, you’ll know it quickly. We make podcasts and video products that help clinicians learn their craft, stay up to date, and remember why they do it. We love what we do.
I grew up in Southern California addicted to skateboarding and music. I should have picked surfing because concrete has become pretty unforgiving in my 40s, and surfing has become an obsession. But, skateboarding kept me at a healthy distance from trouble and in a creative crowd of great people. I had a great time, and priceless photos exist showing some very creative hairstyles.
Studying biology as an undergraduate is where I discovered a path to medicine which was not something I knew anything about growing up. I was sidelined in college by my own medical/surgical drama that taught me a lot about life, priorities, and what I wanted to do (we can chat about it sometime). It also gave me a good excuse, once I was in the clear, to take some time “off” in New York City and Hawaii before returning a couple years later to medical school in California. After medical school I trained at the phenomenal Los Angeles County + USC Emergency Medicine residency in amazing east Los Angeles, where I got the busiest and best education imaginable. I also happened to meet my wife in between gun shot wounds and stabbed patients.
After graduating as Chief Resident I spent many years in the community of Los Angeles practicing emergency medicine and being a medical director. Eventually, I returned to academics and medical education as faculty at the LAC+USC Emergency Department. It was there, surrounded by some of the hardest working and smartest faculty and residents in the world, that I reconnected with education, teaching, and mentors from my training. Hippo Education was born out of a desire to make authentic, human medical education for the people on the front lines. It was a contrast to the stale, boring, biased, and arrogant education we were seeing at the time. Our resolve has only deepened and broadened over the years. The dedication and talent of the team has grown beyond what I could have imagined when I started it with a mentor of mine and 1 very part-time employee (hi Tom).
Along the way I’ve been blessed with two amazing kids that I can’t do justice to in words, a wonderful wife who tries to understand my quirks and follies, and a community and life that I am deeply grateful for.
Aaron