Story of Sylvia Morris M.D.

If you don’t recognize Dr. Sylvia Morris (M’98) from school, you may have seen her on TV. She’s been on CNN and the Weather Channel, just to name a few, talking to audiences about how to stay healthy.

“When I was working in academic medicine at Emory, our team would get calls from various media outlets,” said Morris. “So I ended up on TV, and I realized how much I liked it. I enjoyed interacting with lay people and helping the light bulb go off for them in terms of their health.”

Morris now works as an internist for Kaiser Permanente in Atlanta. She got her start in the Georgetown Experimental Medical Studies (GEMS) program before completing her medical education at Georgetown.

On Following Your Heart

“We’ve all become physicians because in essence we really want to help people. It’s clichéd, but that’s really the bottom line. But how do we help people? Every individual physician will find that answer very differently. So I try to tell students who are coming up to do whatever it is that is their calling. Make the best decision based on what you enjoy, what you are good at, and how you envision your life unfolding. Do that irrespective of money. The money will follow, but there’s nothing worse than an unhappy physician.”

On Following Her Heart

“I wanted to help communities in need. I went to public health school at Johns Hopkins between my third and fourth year of medical school and I became much more exposed to the impact of public health. The natural extension for me was adult medicine.”

On Georgetown: “It’s the People”

“For me the word community comes to mind. I was a GEMS student. The community of people in my cohort was what helped me succeed in medical school. We laughed together, we cried together, and those are still the people that I am in contact with now. If I think back to Georgetown I think about a lot of studying. But I also think about when we had opportunities to take breaks from the grind. We would get dressed up and have dinner out. It’s the people I remember.”