HER Insight: Damaris Raymondi, OD, Sur Eye Care

Erinn Morgan: Hello everyone, my name is Erinn Morgan with Insight Media, and I am here today with Dr. Damaris Raymondi. She is an optometrist in New York City and we are going to talk today for our HER Insight podcast: Women in Vision Care Leadership about Dr. Raymondi’s leadership philosophies, a little bit about her own journey, her tips for aspiring female leaders in the profession and in the industry today. So, Dr. Raymondi, thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate you being here.

Damaris Raymondi: Thank you so much for thinking about me and for having me. I’m really looking forward to our conversation.

EM: I am as well. Thank you. And so can you tell us a little bit first about what is your current role? Well, I think you may have more than one role.

DR: Yes, so right now it’s Monday and this is my main day at Sur Eye Care, my practice. I cold opened this back in April 2021. This is in my hometown of Jackson Heights, Queens. And here, the hat that I wear is family eye care, pediatric eye care, and heavy myopia management. I work on the practice, work on building it up.

For the second half of the week, I am Dr. Raymondi at Metropolitan Hospital where I focus a lot on glaucoma and on ocular surface and dry eyes, basically making sure that patients’ eyes are super healthy and giving them ocular surface makeovers. So a little bit of private practice, a little bit of hospital care, which, actually, they feed into one another often. And it’s just an amazing, been an amazing experience.

EM: That’s fantastic. Well, it sounds like you are a very busy person and I understand you’re a relatively new mom as well. Is that true?

DR: That’s my other hat. I am a mom to an almost … he’s 17 months. He’s a one week away from 18 months. But to give you a quick review on how it’s been after 18 months, I’ve been back working now for a whole year and I love it. I love it. I went back to work in January of last year and I didn’t know how would feel. And this whole year, It’s been good. So just to like kind of give it out there to women. I wanted to go back. I want to be back. I want to be here helping patients. I get that balance of being able to take care of the family.

EM: That’s amazing. It’s great. It’s wonderful to be able to have that balance and bring both sides now to each other, right? You get filled up with your passion for optometry and then you can go home and have a great moment.

DR: Not without a village. It’s not perfect. It’s not perfect, but it’s worth it and it’s what I want.

EM: Well, congratulations. Sounds like a great balance for you. So can you tell us a little bit about your own journey in optometry? I know you’ve done many things, different things over the years and held different roles. What excites you most about your current role?

DR: Well, my journey through optometry, I remember I graduated in 2015. In the beginning, I didn’t know what I wanted or rather I thought I knew what I wanted. I was convinced that I already had it all figured out, everything’s perfect. And after a few years, I had to do that self evaluation where I was like, wait a minute, it’s not perfect. It could be better. and, to get to that next level, you do need that self awareness because initially, right, again, you don’t want to admit that you don’t know things. And when you’re just burgeoning and just blossoming into your career, you do want to come across as like, I got it all figured out. It’s good. It’s fine. But at the same time, you want to think about, well where am I? At the time when I first graduated, I had three jobs. I was piecing together fill-ins, which was normal in a way. But in another way, it kind of wasn’t. I didn’t realize until later that that’s not how I can best serve my patients.

And I hear this over and over again. So whoever’s listening, I want you to see if you identify with this. I said, I’m here and it’s not perfect pay and I’m not 100% happy, I’m going to stay here because who else is going to help these patients? And only after a while did I realize that I was in a way like becoming a martyr. If I’m not filling up my own cup, if I’m not looking out for myself, what am I going to give? Because what I was doing, I was consuming myself via those fillings. I was like, there’s patients, they need to be seen. I’m going to work six days a week. I’m passionate about this. I’m going to save all of them. That’s what I thought. And so I stayed in many situations longer than I should.

EM: Interesting. There’s a lot of studies come out recently that have shown burnout among optometrists, severe it’s happening across all ages and genders, but it’s primarily young female doctors. And I think that’s very good advice to make sure you’re filling up your own cup because certainly that could lead to burnout.

DR: It took me admitting that I needed help. And then it also took me having to go and ask a mentor. I reached out to a mentor and I said, I want to improve this. How can I improve on this? And at that point they redirected me. But I had to listen to the advice. And that’s something else that I noticed as well. Now that I’m in a privileged position to be a mentor, as a mentee, if you’re given advice, you’ve got to listen to it.

The way that I’ve been able to help patients is beyond my wildest dreams. When I gave myself the time to reflect, when I gave myself the time to think what positions are better going to suit me. When I took the time to not just accept any position, but I said, “what’s going to help me feel taken care of in terms of benefits or in terms of future potential?” Back then, I was only able to get a patient an eye drop sample. And I thought that was important.

But now I have been able to connect patients to much needed life changing surgeries. I’ve been able to get them access to procedures that they wouldn’t normally be able to afford or they they were accessible to them. the way that I’m able to help now, it’s what I wanted, but I didn’t realize that I needed it.

And so, so the two things for that are really be self-aware of where you are at, and number two really sit down with the advice that you’re given, listen to it and see. Because sometimes you get lost in yourself. You’re like, I’m a doctor, I’m smart. I must know everything. But you realize that there’s more that you don’t know.

EM: It’s so true. And that’s great, really fantastic advice perspective for folks because it is hard sometimes to see that and to have that hindsight now that you know that was the right thing to do at the right time.

So my next question was kind of, what’s your own personal leadership philosophy? And I know maybe that’s a part of it, right, is to kind of take that advice or know where you’re at. But anything else that you would add to that?

DR: Ask for help. I grew up, I born and raised in Queens. There’s a lot of ego with good reason. You always want to walk self-assured. There’s pride, but that pride can be detrimental to your own growth. And it’s like a defense mechanism. You grow up and you’re like, no, I know exactly where things are. It’s true. You don’t want to look lost ever. You don’t want to become a target, but that pride can go too far and it can hurt you. If you’re too prideful, then nobody’s going to help you. Nobody’s going to seek you out. You know, have to really recognize that the more that you end up learning, there’s less that you know.

So, be prideful of everything that you’ve achieved, but at the same time, you gotta put that down and understand that there’s a lot that you don’t know. There’s a lot that you’ve yet to accomplish. And the only way is by asking help, because others have done it already. So you ask for help, ask questions, constantly try to improve. And you will find someone who can guide you through all that.

EM: Yes. That’s great. Well, thank you for that advice. In addition to your personal leadership philosophy, what do you find most challenging as a leader?

DR: One very challenging part is reminding yourself of your goal, right? Like centering yourself and thinking, hey, is this what got me here? And is this what’s going to propel me forward? So for me, that’s patient care, because it’s also very easy to accept every opportunity but not only are you not building yourself, but then you forget your main ethos. And the reason that I do all these things, the reason that I push myself and I work hard is to help patients. That’s why I lose sleep, not for anything else. If it were for money, there’s a million other things I could be doing, but I’m not. It’s not rewarding. That’s not going to bring me joy. It’s not going to bring me fulfillment.

What’s going to constantly feed that fulfillment and feed that reward mechanism in me is helping a patient. But from what I’ve learned, helping them with their eyes, with their eyesight, and getting them connected to what they need. So that’s the challenging part to like re-center yourself and remember like why are you doing what you’re doing and why you’re starting there.

EM: For sure. That’s great. And so as a leader in optometry, looking at the profession, looking at the vision care industry right now, where are we heading in the future? What are the big opportunities in practice right now?

DR: It’s all so big. It’s all ready for the taking. And it’s up to us to stay excited about it. I often tell the children that come here, “I need help. I need you to become an optometrist.” Because there’s no way that I could possibly see all these patients to the level that I’m trying to help everybody. I need other excited folks, helping folks in their respective communities too.

So I think a lot of it is ocular surface issues. That’s a big place where the future is taking us. Dry eye., myopia management too. Even though all of these things have been around, you won’t believe how many patients still come to me and haven’t even tried artificial tears. And they haven’t even heard of Ortho-K, which has been around for 30 years now. It takes things take a long time to trickle down.

EM: It’s true. Well, there are so many advances in those areas of practice, incredible advances and incredible products out there that have been recently introduced. So there’s more and more opportunity.

DR: Yes. There’s so much to go around. You just have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone. So I think that’s the main message for everything I’m trying to say. Constantly get out of your comfort zone.

EM: So to wrap up our conversation today, I have one last question. If you could please share one kind of leadership strategy or insight or tip for other aspiring female leaders. And there’ve been a lot of tips so far.

DR: My number one tip, all of us in all of these talks give out our contact information. If something that somebody said really resonates with you and you can identify with their patient demographic or their excitement about the product or whatever it is, anybody that you just connect through any of these CE lectures, any of these podcasts, or any article. There’s always contact info in there. Please reach out. Send out that email, find that doctor that you identify with. Reach out, cold call, cold email. It works wonders. The traditional old-fashioned way of just reaching out and saying, hey, I watched this, I want to learn more about this.

EM: I love it. Fantastic advice. That’s great and actionable and you can do it right away, right? Or do it this week. So, well, thank you so much, Dr. Raymondi. So appreciate you being here with us. Great insights today.

DR: All right, thank you so much, you as well.

EM: And thank you all for joining us for HER Insight: Women in Vision Care Leadership for our podcast. We will be back again soon with more podcasts. Thank you.