Highland Hospital chief of pathology is retiring after decades on the job, starting new life as an entrepreneur. She is launching a new skin care product — Julee Glow — designed to ‘nourish and protect your skin through all seasons’
By Chris Motola
Q: So, you are planning to retire in June after a long career. Let’s take a look back at it. What got you interested in medicine in the first place?
A: What got me interested in this? Well, I am from a third world country and I remember growing up there was a river in my neighborhood. I used to collect animals, dead animals and dissect them and open them and figure them out. So that was my first exposure to science. And, my dad would say, “you’ll be the doctor of the family.” So, it was instilled in me at a very, very young age that I would be a physician. But it was a long trajectory. I got really interested in medicine after I’d worked with a publishing company first and got married. I had my daughter, got a divorce and then at that point I said,“ What should I do?“ And at that point, my father’s voice rang true in my head, “Become a doctor.” And so I did. That’s the long story in a nutshell.
Q: What eventually brought you to Rochester?
A: So, Rochester is a long story. I left [Saint Lucia] in the Caribbean when I was 19. I headed for New York City where my sister lived. She said, “Oh, why don’t you come there? Many opportunities for you in America.” I had no inclination of what I was going to do in America. Everybody migrated to America because it’s the land of the free and hope, right? Of becoming a better person, having a better life. I came and, of course, there aren’t a lot opportunities for a foreigner. So, I enrolled in school. I went to Pace University. I started, took one course there and then I got married and I worked at the publishing company, had my daughter at 24. My marriage fell apart, And so did the [publishing company]. I stayed in New York City until I finished my medicine training at St. John’s University. I did my college and my medicine training in Buffalo and then at that time, I had remarried and just followed my husband and I ended up in Rochester.
Q: What led to your interest in your specialty?
A: I am a very visual person. So, when I was in medical school, the training was you listen with your stethoscope, you listen to the heart, you listen to the lungs. Because I’m a visual person, I could actually see the organs. It’s a design thing. I’m also a fashion designer, so seeing the final product before I actually cut the fabric is important. Like my husband — he is a family medicine physician and he can actually see a patient and work with a patient. I can’t do that. I have to have the body parts to actually diagnose something. So, pathology was right up my alley. The minute I was introduced to it, I just knew exactly where I belonged in pathology. I did my residency. I did my fellowship, everything in pathology and never look back.
Q: What areas of pathology in particular?
A: There are so many different kinds of pathology and I am triple-boarded in three of them. But surgical pathology, which deals with mainly blood and tissue looking under the microscope, that was one specialty in pathology that I absolutely love. The other one is laboratory medicine where you examine tubes of blood. And the other one is when you look at actual cells. You go in with a needle, you look at actual cells under a microscope.
Q. What eventually got you into the administrative side of things?
A: I am a businesswoman at heart. I had my business in Rochester; I used to make wedding gowns and evening gowns. So, you have that business side of me that’s always there, present also. I love business and I love fashion and I love medicine. I launched my new business called Julee Glow, juleeglow.com, last November and am back into the business side of my life. So, it’s fun. You get to be innovative, think about what the customer wants, strategy, expenses. Medicine is more strict; you follow rules. You don’t have much room for error. With business when you make an error, you can recalibrate. So, at Highland I love doing the parts of that that overlap. I love doing budgets. I love looking at cost of equipment, cost of materials to, you know, run tests. And administrative. I love also dealing with people. You know, seeing that they grow in their capacities. And so, I love all that parts.
Q: So, you’re not really entering into retirement, you’re just moving on to something else.
A: Yes, I’m going back into organic skincare. Physician-formulated skincare. I am from Saint Lucia, so all my products I am coming up with will be named a village in Saint Lucia. My Caribbean roots are deep and strong in me and I’ll tell you the way everything blends together in the Caribbean, particularly in my family. Education was No. 1. My parents would walk around in rags; they sacrificed everything for our education. That is why I am using that same philosophy and I have created several scholarships for like one for Highland, one for Jordan Health, one for Trillium Health. That’s my way of giving back to the community and giving back to the universe that has helped me taken me from where I started, which is extremely poor living in a hut with no running water, no electricity, to where I am the chief of pathology at Highland.
Lifelines
Name: Julietta Fiscella, M.D.
Position: Director at Pathology and Laboratory Services at Highland Hospital
Hometown: Castries, Saint Lucia, Caribbean
Education: University at Buffalo, School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences 1988; Internship: internal medicine, Sisters of Charity Hospital of Buffalo. 1988-1989; Residency: pathology, Anatomic Pathology & Clinical Pathology, University at Buffalo, 1990 – 1992; pathology, Anatomic Pathology & Clinical Pathology, University of Rochester Medical Center. 1992 – 1995
Affiliations: URMC system
Organizations: College of American Pathology, American Association of Physician Leadership
Family: Husband, daughter, son
Hobbies: Entrepreneurship, running, fashion design, teaching cooking classes, novice piano playing