In Episode 05 of Leaders of Tomorrow, LAJF Executive Director Helene Mattera talks to Dr. Hooman Yaghoobzadeh, Camp Rising Sun alumnus and current cardiologist in New York City, about living for others, servant leadership, and what he took home from Camp Rising Sun. They discuss:
The “selfishness” inherent in altruism—and how altruism was a concept Hooman first delved into at CRS
Hooman’s experience immigrating with his parents to the US at the age of 7
His struggles both as an immigrant and an academically inclined person to fit in—and how CRS helped him to do that
Learning about the dynamic between leading and following that was uniquely a part of Hooman’s Camp Rising Sun experience
The nature of “true perspective” and the search for truth
How invaluable a Camp Rising Sun experience would be in bringing people together from across the political spectrum
Listen now:
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to Leaders of Tomorrow. I'm your host, Helene Mattera. We created Leaders of Tomorrow to share a little bit of the magic that happens at Camp Rising Sun, and to hear the stories of personal transformation. Today, I'm speaking with Dr. Hooman Yaghoobsadeh, a prominent cardiologist in New York City. Instead of getting medical advice from him today or hearing about his passion for plant based diets, we hear his take on altruism and his search for true perspective.
Hi, Hooman.
Hey Helene, how are you?
Good, good. There's so many topics that I enjoy talking to about. But today, we won't be talking about medical advice or healthy eating. Today, I wanted to focus more on how you as a cardiologist feed your metaphorical heart. But I don't want to gloss over the fact that you're a physician though, because I know that caring for people is who you are, as a human being. Tell us about why you love your work.
It for me is the perfect opportunity to combine science and scientific thought, which is something that I've always been interested in, in the scientific process with interpersonal relationships, and having somebody in front of you to interact with in real time.
You know, specifically cardiology, has some physics in it, and is that field in medicine, where you really can see the effects of your interventions in real time. So there's as close to immediate gratification in cardiology, as there can be in medicine, because of the types of medications that we use. Although, a lot of the things that I've found myself really interested in is preventive cardiology, and general internal medicine, and you alluded to diet and lifestyle modification, and so on, so forth. Those are obviously habits that pay rewards many, many decades later.
Yeah, and I've heard you speak about your medical work, and not just helping the individual person—the patient that you're working with—but that you almost see it as a way that you're having an impact on the world. Could you tell us a little bit about that perspective?
Yeah. You know, I feel most happy and energized and motivated when I feel like I'm working hard and achieving at my greatest potential. I've always felt—and this sort of comes from, I don't know if it's Western or Eastern—but some of the concepts of individualism and capitalism, really talk about how, through achieving your potential, and doing your best, you also help those around you.
And so, I often come to it from that perspective, and I know that sitting there with a patient and helping them figure out a problem feels very empowering to me. It gives me agency over my interactions, but importantly, it gives me agency over somebody else's life, which is, you know, a huge privilege. It's every day, you know, whenever a patient thinks me, “Oh, thank you, you know, for x, y, and z,” right away—and I say to them very earnestly—it's truly a privilege to do what I do, and to be able to do what I do.
So for me, that is a gift. It's something that I try not to take for granted, and I do that by knowing that it's something that I can lose, unless I really stay on top of what I'm doing—on the medical research, stay involved in not just the medicine side of things, but how health is delivered, and being involved in conversations about health equity and so on and so forth. So all of that stuff sort of ties in, and into me being a physician, and my view of the world, and how much we need to give and sacrifice to to take care of each other.
Yeah, I really appreciate that, and even in our relationship, having the benefit of knowing some of your other patients, you know, we really appreciate the the type of perspective you take as a doctor—you really see the whole person. And you know, I love your view about health and wellbeing. If we're physically healthy, we can be our best selves and care for our broader community. And it's like setting up a positive feedback loop that has this never-ending ripple effect, and it reminds me of our approach to Servant Leadership at Camp, and this concept of Leader as someone who is caring for the community and the personal satisfaction that comes from service.
At some point, you and I had an interesting conversation about your thoughts on altruism, and it really was kind of a different perspective for me to hear that there is no such thing as, like, “selfless giving”—that selflessness doesn't exist, and that really altruism is something that is both selfish and selfless. Can you tell our listeners about your take on altruism?
Yeah, sure. I think I approach it from sort of an evolutionary perspective, you know. Anything that if we're a function of Darwinian type of evolution, we should be able to explain much of what we do, and how we are, and who we are, through that lens. And when you look at altruism, from an evolutionary perspective—it's very hard, it's very difficult to come up with why somebody would be truly, completely, 100% selfless, unless you bring in the community and the role of the community to allow that person then to fulfill their full potential.
So for me, and obviously, there are through the ages, philosophers who have expanded on this extensively, and we can go back and forth on the philosophical argument of, “Is there something truly as being completely selfless and altruistic?” But I would say, at the very least, on a practical level, from a way to teach altruism, and a way to measure it, and look at it, and figure out how to increase it in the world—from a practical perspective, I think most of the things that we do that are for the betterment of others come through some cognition that it helps those around us, they're part of our community, specifically through empathy, especially, which is something that was a concept that I first learned at camp and. Or, I'm sure I learned—I definitely learned about it before, but investigated it in more of an academic and intellectual way.
And empathy, you know, if you think about it, if you feel what others are feeling, and therefore you act to make others feel better, then you feel better as well. So even in that situation, you're acting to somehow make yourself feel better. I see that as something to rejoice over and enjoy and validate. It's not something that we should, you know, move away from, but it's something that we should move towards, specifically when, when it's around energies that you put into trying to make your world a better place—in your microcosm, as well as in a larger picture.
Yeah, and I can see it in the sense that likely, we wouldn't want the majority of people doing service to be doing it only selfishly, and we don't want people to be working selflessly, without caring for their own wellbeing. So there's some balance in that. And I think that that's really something that our campers learn in different ways in living in this environment.
I'd like to take us back a little bit and and if you could paint a picture for us, you know, 1987 on Staten Island in New York, and you go off to Camp Rising Sun. What was 15-year-old Hooman like, and what was his life like, up until that point when you went to camp? What was important to you?
I emigrated to the States when my parents emigrated. I just tagged along. I was six and a half, seven, and so I was very much an immigrant, you know, in the immigrant, “outside” kind of persona in school. I was not, quote-unquote “popular,” but you know, I was confident in who I was, and I grew up in a very, very loving home.
So you know, as a sophomore in high school, kind of awkward. self-conscious for sure, struggling to figure out how I fit in, in my class, and in the sort of a larger picture, struggling with how different I was, and different I dressed. And that was me back then. Not very sporty. I was very academic. I loved to read, I loved fantasy, Tolkien and the trilogy and sci-fi and all of that stuff for me was something that I was really, really into.
And I think even when I look back on the literature or the movies that I was drawn to, most often they were these stories about a better world, about how do we create a better world. Even looking through it actually, as we're speaking, it's sort of having these you know, light bulb insights about myself. But you know, in college it was reading Karl Marx and in med school and residency, it was reading Ayn Rand, and really enjoying that. And so all of these concepts of bigger picture worlds and societies and how do we get along with each other, and how can we best take care of each other, and what systems of government, what systems of economics, would allow us to all fulfill our potential the most—has always been something that I'm like, really interested about.
What's interesting, you know, the camp Rising Sun community that forms sort of naturally when you bring sixty kids from all over the world together to lead and learn from each other. I mean, I've definitely heard it jokingly described like some utopian or even post-apocalyptic, you know—a bunch of kids living off the land and creating a new world.
And it's interesting to hear you say that, that it sort of is on your landscape in a set of interests that are similar. And I think that there is something really special that happens when we create our community, because we have this process where the campers sort of oscillate in and out of positions of power and positions of followership. I think it really builds this balance of “What kind of community do I want to be part of, and then when I'm in charge of something, how do I use my power to create that community that I would want to be part of?”
And so there really is this sense of, being a leader is caring for the people that are in your community. It's not, you know, being in charge or being able to boss people around, or even, we see during the course of the season, that sometimes the leaders at the beginning do take this more traditional approach to leadership that is a little more dictatorial. And then as time goes on, and they realize how they experienced those leaders as community members, they realize, “Okay, scratch that, I don't want that to be my style.” And through this, like, trial and error, and keeping on experimenting with all of that, that's really how we build ethical leadership.
Absolutely, I think it's actually a unique thing that Camp Rising Sun does. You know, when you want somebody to become a great soccer player, they practice, practice, practice, have to be on different teams, learn from different people. And that goes for math and anything else that we want to excel at. But when it comes to leadership, you know, the practice that we get as we grow up really is not iIn that same way. It's, you know, typically very, very goal and project oriented, and it comes in piecemeal.
It also leaves very little room for experimentation and failure, because, you know, if you're going to lead your team in your biology group to do the best on this group project, and you're going to take a leadership position, you don't, you know, have a chance to rotate several times and see what happens, and so on and so forth. Camp is this amazing time at a very unique stage in life, to practice all of those attributes, including the attributes of sitting back and watching and empathizing, and so on and so forth. And so that practice is essential. It's also essential to understand that leadership is essential, which is something that I think we often look past.
In fact, much of the more populist or more progressive, often talks about how leadership can be 100% decentralized. And I think it in a very practical way, Camp teaches you, sure, there are some things that, you know, can be 100% democratic, in the true Greek sense of the term as opposed to the modern democracy sense of the term. But leadership is essential in many different ways, and for it to be essential, you have to have people who at times also know how to follow.
There's no other experience in my life that has taught me as much about that dynamic as camp did when I was 15, 16. And so yes, and it is that—you know, we talk about communes, or kibbutzes, and there's a lot of, you know, those places, we just don't have those opportunities. And, it is an amazing, amazing opportunity.
Yeah, and I think there's an element at camp where you learn that you are likely going to be happier when you are leading a life that considers others—that true fulfillment comes from understanding different perspectives, and not just relying on your own view or your own satisfaction to drive you.
So when Camp ended, after you've had this, you know, utopian experience with these young men from all over the world, what was it like to go home and be with your family? Or what changed in you, and what did you notice that was different when you got home?
Yeah. In this, you know, quote unquote, “safe space” that's Camp, you develop these unbelievably tender and deep bonds with these other folks. And the first thing when you go back home is, you realize how unique that is, and how even if you don't keep in touch with all those people for the rest of your life, that opportunity is so—nutritious, is like the best term I would use—in the way that we use nutrition to improve health, it is such a positive effect on your being.
And so that was the first thing that I realized when I went back home: how truly, you know, special, that opportunity was. And when you get back home, besides being better at washing dishes, because that’s what you’ve been doing for a long time, it's impossible to not have a different perspective. Before Camp, even though I knew—I think I knew kids who had a different sexual orientation than I did—I never really knew them. I didn't truly understand and hear from them personally how they had come to that point in their life, and what they had to struggle with, and what it means. So this ability to see a different perspective was extraordinary and was an eye opener. And that definitely started me on sort of a, I think, a different trajectory in my life than I would have had otherwise,
There's almost something about hearing so many different perspectives on a topic that it almost relieves an individual from being right. You know, quote unquote “being the right one,” the desire to figure everything out. Like once you know that there's no one truth.
Something for example that we do at Camp is look at newspapers from all over the world and compare on any given day, or on any specific event that happened in history, and look to see how different parts of the world represented and interpreted the event. And those conversations are always so interesting, and I think it's similar to—you know, it's connected, at least to what you're saying about seeing all of these different perspectives and whether it's how someone lives their life and lives their gender, or lives family dynamics, or learning about how schooling systems work in different parts of the world. Just sort of understanding that there's no one perspective—that there's no one truth or right way of thinking of things.
Absolutely. For me, what's really interesting about that is that I believe that to become a better person—to become a better person within a community and therefore make a better community—the oxymoron is that even though there's not one perspective, it's this drive for what I call “true perspective,” that leads us to be better people. And what I mean by that is that each of us have our own individual point in space, kind of view of the world, and that's a one dimensional, literally point in space. When you develop a relationship with somebody else, and you truly understand their perspective, then those two points in space are connected with a line, and that's more of, as opposed to a one dimensional, a two dimensional construct.
As you meet more people and truly understand their perspective, and their life—and sometimes your perspectives come through interactions that you have with nature, and with animals, and with all these other things that leave an indelible change in the way you view the world—as you connect yourself to all these other points out in three dimensional space from you in all directions, you're creating a sphere around you, which is a three dimensional construct.
That three dimensional sphere of perspective, of sight, looks outward, and inward also, you can sort of see that the truth and who you are, as well as you know, being able to look out at the world. Now, if you take that one step further, theoretically—if you can fill that sphere with an infinite number of dots, you literally will see everything out forever, in a true way. Now, obviously, that's impossible, where you would be able to look at every situation with a true perspective, but it's that search for a truer perspective that I think makes our world a better place.
So I think we can agree on certain concepts, and use those concepts to determine right versus wrong, to determine what's a better way to do something or to look at something, or what is quote unquote, “truer than another.” So I don't believe that everybody has their own truth. We're all striving to figure out what truth is, but one of the tools to be best able to do it is to try to connect yourself with as many of these external perspectives as you can, and not continually stay in your own echo chamber. I think that actually has a tremendous amount of validity in today's world, where it's very easy.
So yeah, camp was the place where I dipped my toe in the water to understand how deep that pond is, and come up with a plan as to how I'm gonna swim in those waters. And for me, the search for true perspective is a guiding force, literally. And when I was, you know, 15, I started thinking about that, and once I was in college, I realized that this is really something that was very, very important to me, and I never wanted to forget it. So I actually tattooed it into my body, to make sure that even when I'm like 60, I will not lose sight that, you know, this is something that I really hold dear.
Yeah, and I think that's something that you had said earlier about empathy and really experiencing that on a very deep level at Camp. I can see how once you learn that there's all these different perspectives, there's then almost like an action step and action item that follows that, like you then kind of go out into the world trying to help there be justice, so that people's perspectives can be heard. I know that when you went off to college, you started thinking more about activism, and I wanted you to tell our listeners about the button you stuck on your backpack. I thought that was great.
My wife Deborah, who's a PhD psychologist, she teases me about this all the time. I used to wear a button on my backpack that said, “This is what a radical feminist looks like.”
Right on!
Well, and I'm not sure if I would wear that button today, although I believe everything that it says. But yeah, I probably would. I should, and I should challenge myself to, actually! Yeah! You know what? I'm gonna search for a button that looks like that, and put it somewhere that's visible. Why not?
Nice. That's great!
So I know that you've stayed closely involved with Camp for a long time, and that your best friend is from Camp, and you live even near each other. You're both doctors. But what other reasons do you choose to stay involved with Camp Rising Sun?
Yeah. And in fact, you know, you pointed to something that may have changed my life more than anything that we've already talked about, which is meeting Rob Schwartz. Even though we were from the same high school, and in the same class, we had literally never talked to each other before Camp, because we were from two very different kind of groups. And he is now family and our kids have grown up together, and it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. Magical thing, actually.
I had always kept up with Camp, but at some point, realized that I needed to get involved. It was something that I was surprised about not being involved previously with. At the time, some years ago, when I decided to get reengaged, I called up Christine and I said, “Christine, I want you every year to call me and make sure that I'm donating.”
So at first it was “Okay, you know, I just want to financially support,” but it just, one thing led to another and that feeling that I wanted to give back to this institution that had given so much to me, in retrospect, after being now on the board for several years—it's something that, again, growing from and gaining from, getting joy out of and contentment, and in growing as a person and learning other perspectives, meeting other board members from different walks of life. So, you know, it's yet another example, that it's fulfilling me in very selfish ways.
Very selfish ways!?
Yeah! And that's been very empowering. It has led to me reaching out to others outside of our alumni community to let them know what a wonderful organization LAJF is, and what a unique role they can have in the world.
Yeah, you've been an amazing ambassador, for our program and our values. I think that's one of the most important things, is really echoing out there into the world what ethical servant leadership is, and why it's so important right now. Why it's still relevant after 90 years of our program running. And I deeply appreciate that about what you're doing for LAJF as a board member.
No, I, I love it. I love it. And it transcends our current perspectives that are so colored by where we see ourselves on the political spectrum. It's something that everyone—that all folks across the political spectrum can understand or can learn from, to become just more effective in what they're trying to achieve.
Everybody should go to Camp Rising Sun, I think, and work out these issues.
Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Something that I just wanted to share: When you got elected to the Board of LAJF, I think I was the one who had the privilege of letting you know, and I remember being on the phone with you, and you said, “I'm looking forward to getting to know you.” You said that to me, and and it really touched me. And just after talking with you today in this interview, you know, it's just that that's the way you approach the world—that you are looking to get to know people in a meaningful, deep way. And so I really appreciate having you as a partner in in working at LAJF and as a partner, as a human being.
So tell us as we wrap up for today, what advice might you give 15-year-old Hooman?
Oh, wow. So what advice would I give him at that time?
Yeah.
Wow. I had a lot of worry at that age. I think the angst was—the angst is the thing that I go to first, because it was so painful at times, at the time, that I would want to take it away—was essential, as well. And so I wouldn't say “Don't worry, because there's a lot of things to worry about, but find ways to make the worry work in your favor, by getting involved and having an outlet for the angst, and taking control of your surroundings—are ways to allay some of that existential kind of angst.”
If I could infuse a little bit of confidence? “Figure out a way to figure this social anxiety thing out, Hooman, because that's, like holding you back.”
And Hooman, what gives you hope?
That's the easiest question that you've asked, because in my job, as a voluntary physician at Cornell, I am part of the internal medicine admissions process. So I interview incoming internal medicine residents who are med school graduates. And being on the board, I'm obviously involved in the young boys and girls who come through LAJF, and, any interaction that I have with young people today, be it my own kids, or these kids that I'm interacting with—it is amazing to me, how much that they've accomplished, how well informed their views are of the world. Much more advanced than it was when I was 15. And they have access to tremendous information, they're able to process it, and I think the new generation’s ability to integrate the complexity of the world—and so even though all of our technology and interconnectedness makes the world a much smaller, but much, much more complex and therefore intense place—at the same time these kids have evolved, learned, I don't know, what's the right term? An ability to be able to juggle those complexities.
And so that gives me a lot of hope, because, you know, they'll be taking care of me when I'm older, and I do believe that the world, because of each successive generation’s ability to improve the world, the world continues—if not year over year, then probably decade over decade. And in those decades where it's not obvious decade over decade, then surely century over century. And there may be three or four centuries, you know, the medieval times come to mind, but I'm sure there were others that were even prehistoric. And even in those times where it's not century over century, definitely millennia, over millennia, the world is becoming a better place.
And, you know, the next existential threat, which is taking care of our planet, obviously puts all that up for grabs. However, there's no reason not to believe that we're going to conquer that one also, if we all start pulling in the same direction. So I guess that's what optimism is, and I'm adefinitely a “glass is half full” kind of guy. But to me, that's just realism, as opposed to pie in the sky.
Yeah, yeah. And I think that that sort of brings us full circle to where we started, with the idea of social evolution, you know, our society evolving.
Right.
Well, it’s been a pleasure talking to you.
Thank you, to you as well. And thank you so much for this opportunity. This is a privilege to do this as well.
About Dr. Hooman:
Dr. Hooman Yaghoobzadeh is a renowned cardiologist in affiliation with New York Presbyterian Hospital. He also serves as a voluntary clinical professor of medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical Center. As part of the voluntary faculty at Cornell, he is able to use his expertise to teach, participate in clinical research, and collaborate on patient care. An advocate of evidence-based medicine, he argues for sensible lifestyle choices and a plant-based diet as a key to a healthy heart, and life.
Dr. Hooman has been featured on NBC’s Today Show and CBC’s Evening News, as well as various radio talk shows. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1998, and completed his Internal Medicine Residency and Cardiology Fellowship shortly thereafter. He has been licensed to practice medicine for over twenty years.