It has been a singular privilege and honor for me to be the president of the Western Vascular Society (WVS) for 2021. What I hope to share today is a little bit of my own perspectives about vascular health and also the health of our profession. I hope you will indulge me in some of this.

If you take the analogy that we all start out as stem cells, we are molded and differentiated by the institutions that we circulate through and the folks that we adhere to. And that goes for me as well. I was impacted and inspired early on in my career by giants of academic surgery, surgeons like Drs. Tom Shires, Steve Lowry, and John Mannick. I had the privilege of working with just amazing people at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, with surgical leaders like Dr. Andy Whittemore and Dr. Mike Zinner, who always rose to the occasion and did so with grace. I had a particular opportunity to get to know Dr. Alexander Clowes early in my career, starting as a resident, and to be inspired by his model as a surgeon scientist; the opportunity to interact with him over the years had a tremendous effect on me.

But in particular, I want to recognize my dear friend, Dr. Mike Belkin. Role model, mentor, and brother all rolled into one. I can't say anything more about it, other than that. My experience at the Brigham was largely shaped by our relationship, but also by the many other talented people that I interacted with there who made me appreciate, in a more global way, how our field fits into the overall universe of cardiovascular medicine and vascular health.

At the University of California San Francisco, I have continued to learn and be inspired by my outstanding surgical colleagues and staff. We just have a tremendous team of people with unique talents and breadth of interest, constantly striving to be better and innovate. And they have made me better and help me analyze where I need to improve continuously. Most importantly, our trainees, several of whom you have heard from at this meeting, also continue to push and inspire me—and teach me new ways of looking at things that we have been looking at for a long time, but through new eyes. I think that this is a tremendous thing for our specialty, this influx of new, exciting, smart, and diverse people that we need to continue to promote, and we are promoting trainees at this meeting. I am very proud of that.

One last and very important person in my life. I have had the unique privilege and opportunity since I came to the Bay area to get to know Dr. Ron Stoney, former president of this society, a giant in vascular surgery, an inspiration in so many ways, who has become a mentor to me and really a family member. I hope Ron is able to listen to the talk today, because Ron continues to inspire not only me, but actually our whole family, by his courage, by his dedication, and by his passion for service in general.

Not only are we molded by our role models and institutions, but also by the vascular communities that we work our way through, including our societies and the little villages we develop as we move through our meetings. For me, early on I began attending the Vascular Research Initiatives Conference, and that group of people has shaped the way I think as a scientist. Of course, the earliest and, in many ways, most rewarding places where I presented were the regional societies in New England and now the Western Vascular. These organizations play a tremendous role in how we think, in our perspectives as surgeons, and how we practice, just by talking to our collaborators and our peers. And of course, the national societies, the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS), where we interact on a more global level with so many other outstanding people. But for me, I have also had a tremendous influence from other organizations, such as the American Heart Association (AHA) and the nonprofit foundation, Vascular Cures, and I will touch on this a little bit later in this talk. But ultimately I think the most important vascular community that shapes our perspectives about how we act as a profession is our patients. I really want to talk today about how our current patients and our future patients need to shape the way we act and think as vascular surgeons.