To My Dear WFITN Friends and Colleagues,
I’d like to start with a huge thank you to Michihiro for all the work he has put in for WFITN, not just as President, but over his many years of involvement with the Excom before his presidency. In addition to his WFITN advocacy, relationship-building, and other Excom work, we have all benefited from his stunningly beautiful anatomy lectures. With all the free time on his hands now that he is Past President, I hope that we can enjoy Michihiro’s teaching even more in the years to come.
Having been born and raised in NYC, it was particularly poignant for me that my presidency began at the NY congress. The symbolism spoke to me loud and clear – the very essence of NYC is that of bringing together people from literally all over to create a community – a community that is one of the world’s great incubators of culture and achievement. And the very essence of WFITN is that of bringing together neurointerventionalists from all over the world to create a community of learning. For me personally, WFITN has been absolutely central in my career growth as a pediatric INR. Given that many of the pediatric trailblazers were not in the US, WFITN has been pivotal in helping me foster relationships around the world, using congresses as mentoring opportunities to pick the experts’ brains, with the great pleasure being that in many cases, these relationships have grown into deep friendships.
I’m very proud of our Excom work of the past few years on things like the low/middle income country observership program and fostering a truly vibrant women-in-INR group. And I’m very energized by the opportunity to help the WFITN Federation Assembly really take oS as a well-functioning body. But what I truly consider sacrosanct is that WFITN continue to play the role that I described above – of bringing people together, from diSerent places around the entire globe, from diSerent cultures, diSerent perspectives, and diSerent backgrounds, to form a community that builds shared knowledge, expertise, and scientific
advance, with the natural corollary of friendships growing out of that. Only WFITN can play that role, and that is exactly what our patients need, and – to be honest, that is exactly what this crazy world needs.
Thank you so much for giving me the privilege of serving as WFITN President. I’d love to hear from any of you who would like to get more involved with WFITN, and was very happy that some of you already approached me at the congress in NYC. Our success will depend, to a great extent, on how engaged all of you are.
Warm regards,
Darren Orbach
President
