With each year that passes there are more and more BIC graduates doing great work all over the world. Each spring we publish brief “Alumni Updates” where our alumni can tell us some about their post-BIC lives. In addition to these annual updates, we post interviews with our alumni. Today we are excited to post an interview with Dr. Brian Dixon (’02). We hope you enjoy, and if you are interested in being interviewed for a future blog post, email us at BIC@baylor.edu.
What year did you graduate from Baylor? What did you study?
I was BIC Delta Class, from 1998 to 2002. I received a BA in Psychology and completed the pre-med curricula.
What are you doing currently for work/career? What do you enjoy most about your work?
Currently I have a thriving private psychiatry practice in Fort Worth where I spend most of my days working with adult and child patients on mental health concerns. I’m also the current Medical Director for Behavioral Health Services at BaylorScott&White All Saints Medical Center.
What I enjoy the most about my work? Hope. The best part of my day is seeing restored hope in my patients eyes at the end of every appointment. Many come in for various reasons (anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD) and they leave feeling hopeful about their lives and their dreams. I have the best job in the world.
How has your BIC education influenced your life/career since leaving Baylor?
BIC taught me critical thinking; to question “why, what, how” with practically everything I do. While it made for some painful growing through medical school and residency, questioning the status quo has expanded my worldview far more than I could have ever dreamed.
Do you have a favorite memory from your time in BIC?
Hands-down, the best experience from BIC was the camaraderie. We were an oddly close group of strangers who came together the fall of 1998. This was epitomized in the BIC Bulletin Board. Us “BIC(ker)ers” would discuss and argue about all sorts of things and the memory that sticks out the most if the musings about the idea of “Christian university” being mutually exclusive or not. I think those discussions still resound today.
Is there something you learned in BIC that still sticks with you today?
Social World and “paradigm shifts.” When I experienced physician burnout, I started a nonprofit as a vehicle for healthcare reform and have built it into a movement to reform a 3.2 trillion dollar industry. My website: www.changehealth.today tackles the uncomfortable fundamentals of healthcare and social responsibility. Like the painful shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism, our understanding of healthcare needs a foundational paradigm shift. I hope to spark that discussion in 2017.
What are your goals for the future?
In addition to healthcare reform and eliminating mental health stigma, I aim to foster authentic and meaningful discussions on race and culture. As an African-American in the age of post-Obama America, I have a unique perspective on how we can celebrate variations in culture without disparagement or alienation. I aim to help bring this into our collective social consciousness.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
I can say, without a hint of doubt, that BIC helped me become the person I am today.
