Getting to Know Florence Clark, Your New AOTA President
By Stephanie Yamkovenko
On July 1, 2010, Florence Clark, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, became the 28th president of the American Occupational Therapy Association. Clark is brimming with great ideas on how to move our profession into the spotlight and to achieve the goals of the Centennial Vision. We talked to Clark about her priorities for her term, her favorite TV show, and other interesting tidbits that you may not have previously known about your new AOTA president.
Q: As you begin your presidency, what is your personal and overarching goal for your term?
To put occupational therapy in high definition. My idea is that a lot of professions lack substance but have visibility, but for occupational therapy it is the opposite—we have substance, but lack visibility. I’ve been thinking about the ways in which we can get the work that we’re doing in the foreground, to create public awareness, and better position us for advocacy so that all Americans who need our services have access to those.
Q: In your inaugural address, you mentioned how we are halfway to the profession’s Centennial; in what ways do you hope to advance the Centennial Vision goals?
I really want to pump up our advocacy by having very specific targets where we think we can score a touchdown. I think by being focused on specific outcomes, we will be able to make significant triumphs. I would argue that public awareness, advocacy, and research are the three components that synergistically come together to build the strength of the profession, and I will be very focused on bringing those three sources of power in our profession together so that we have the best case for achieving our goals.
Q: Speaking of touchdowns, are you a sports fan?
I am a sports fan, although I wouldn’t immediately think of myself as one, but I admire elite athletes and I like sports in the sense of the community that it builds. I am a Trojan. The University of Southern California is a football school, and, as my mentor and fellow Trojan Elizabeth J. Yerxa once told me, football is a metaphor for life. Unlike some sports that depend largely on accident, football requires having a clear playbook. It’s very strategic and requires the real interface of players with very different talents.
Q: You introduced the notion of High Definition Occupational Therapy. How did you come up with that term?
I was actually riding in the car with my husband, and I suddenly thought of it. I had this sense that our problem in occupational therapy really had to do with fuzziness and being complex and not really being able to be captured when we were trying to explain ourselves. That just really led me to thinking of high definition, and when I started researching high definition I learned about resolution and pixels and the analogy seemed never ending in ways that could inspire me to think about occupational therapy. We need to be front and center. I think if we’re focused on getting there, we’ll get there. I think occupational therapy practitioners are quite thrilled just to see our clients featured and we think it’s fine to be in the background. That is okay, in one sense, because it’s not about us—we’re really all about helping our clients to live life to its fullest. On the other hand, if the public doesn’t know what we do, that really limits their access to our services. High definition simply means bringing the work that we do onto the radar screens of all Americans.
Q: In what ways do you plan to implement this idea of occupational therapy in high definition?
One of the ways to get there is through what I’m calling “pixel power.” Every high definition picture is composed of the vibrancy of each separate pixel, which creates a collective picture. Each pixel can be very different from one another; in fact, high definition pictures are the clearest when they have contrasting pixels. I think that every occupational therapy practitioner is a vibrant pixel, and if we communicate what we do in simple terms on a daily basis I think occupational therapy would easily move into high definition. We need to be very visible on Capitol Hill. We did a terrific job under President Moyers Cleveland’s leadership—we were a major presence on Capitol Hill this year, as we’ve never been before. I hope in my presidency we will just build on that foundation. I think that research is also a very important part of high definition. I’m hoping that we can make it very simple for practitioners to talk about the key research that provides evidence for the effectiveness of our services.
Q: Speaking of high definition, what’s your favorite TV show and why?
Mad Men. I was a teenager in the time period that it takes place, in the early 1960s. AOTA would have been in New York City during this time, so imagine our leaders—they probably didn’t look much different from the women in Mad Men—yet they were female leaders of a profession. It really is quite impressive that our profession was able to achieve so many momentous accomplishments largely through the efforts of women, when most women in this period were like Betty in Mad Men.
Q: What is the most pressing issue facing the profession right now, and how will you respond to that issue as AOTA President?
Health care reform. I want to mobilize every practitioner, every pixel, to be active at the local, state, and national level in advocacy and to talk about their work to the media. The Centennial Vision priorities of public awareness, advocacy, and research, need to become the personal priorities of every practitioner. Every practitioner needs to find some way to be a part of our high definition picture. That’s what I hope to inspire every practitioner to do.
Q: Speaking of issues, how do you keep up with the news?
I have to keep up with the news. I really see that my primary responsibility as AOTA President is to stay externally focused. I need to know what our opportunities are and what our threats are. I make it a priority every morning to watch Morning Joe, and in California that’s quite the challenge because it comes on at 3 a.m. I also read the LA Times and the New York Times and a magazine called This Week, so that I stay on top of the issues.
Q: Why did you decide to run for AOTA president?
I’ve seen this as a calling. I’ve had considerable experience as a researcher, as a practitioner, as an educator, and as an advocate. Once Wilma West said to me, “occupational therapy has been very good to you.” And it has. Then she said, “and you have a legacy to return to it.” I took those words to heart. I’m here because I want to serve the profession in this way before I retire.
Q: What’s your favorite way to relax or spend “me time?”
I love my work so much that it is “me time,” however, I do have a husband, and he always wants me to do other things. Ever since the AOTF Dancing With the Stars event at Conference, where he and I prepared by taking 21 hours of dance lessons, my husband has been obsessed with dance lessons. He’s enrolled us in unlimited dance lessons for this month, and we’ll be doing that every evening.
Q: If you could ask all members to do one thing, what would it be and why?
Tell their stories about the great things that they do as occupational therapy practitioners in whatever arena in which they are most comfortable, and not to refrain from telling their stories in their own words. The stories that practitioners, researchers, and educators around the world have told me about their work are phenomenal.
Q: What’s one thing you want members to know about you?
I’m so impressed with the work that occupational therapy practitioners are doing in education, research, and practice. I think many people might think of me as being just a researcher, but I don’t think of myself that way, because I know that every day I spend time in all three of these capacities. I am just so proud to be in this profession and know of all of the wonderful things we do for people in very hard times helping them live life to its fullest. I’m also proud of what we’re doing with our wounded warriors. My husband is a Vietnam veteran, so the work of occupational therapy practitioners with community reintegration services for wounded warriors is especially important to me. The profession is so diverse among our practitioners and in the populations we serve. It is great to be a part of a diverse and talented group of professionals.
Stephanie Yamkovenko is AOTA’s staff writer.
