MEMBERS
DR. Who
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT MONALISA TAILOR, MD
Aaron Burch
“ I
have to start by Instagramming my food,” laughed Dr. Monalisa Tailor, carefully aiming her phone over a fresh cup of Quill’ s Coffee decorated with a beautiful milk leaf.“ Okay. Now I’ m ready.”
It’ s a quiet Thursday in October, and Dr. Tailor is spending her day off with GLMS. She just came from the Wear the White Coat Breakfast where she partnered with the President of Click IT Staffing, Sam Smith, to introduce him to their upcoming patient care shadowing time. Now Mona, as her friends call her, is sitting in the back of a Main Street coffee shop ready to talk about anything and everything.
Although Dr. Tailor is a Kentucky native, born and raised, she’ s just one generation removed from living in Gujarat, India’ s westernmost state. It was there her mother( Indu) and father( Mohan) lived before moving to the U. S. at the end of the 1970s.
“ My parents were engaged for five years, which is kind of unheard of in Indian culture,” Dr. Tailor explained.“ Their goal was to get to America. If my mom had gotten married any earlier, that would have changed their status and delayed them getting here.”
Dr. Tailor’ s grandparents arrived in 1978 with her mother and aunt following close behind. In 1980, her father and most of their extended family were finally here in Kentucky.
“ My family had gotten in to the business of hotels and hospitality. You bring other family members in. You teach them the ropes. Because my uncle had a motel and my mom’ s uncle had one as well, that’ s what my parents ended up doing.”
Monalisa Tailor was born in Hopkinsville, Ky., and spent the first five years of her life there, before her family moved to Bowling Green. There, they operated the Value Lodge, just a few streets away from the famous Corvette Museum. The family still owns it to this day.
“ I remember during the summer between first and second grade that my dad had to fly to India. My mom was running the motel with my grandparents. So, I helped my mom do all the desk clerk work. I was taking keys from people in the mornings. I was doing calculations for their credit cards. It was a good thing I had math skills,” she laughed.
There weren’ t any physicians in the family, but Dr. Tailor was encouraged into health care by the experiences of her grandparents.“ They had an Indian doctor whom they saw because they could speak to him in our language, Gujarati. I liked seeing their interactions, and it really became a positive influence.”
Dr. Tailor is fluent in Gujarati and still speaks it with family and friends whenever possible. Growing up, she loved to read history, as well as iconic series like“ The Babysitters Club” and“ Goosebumps.” She also dove head first into politics.
“ I loved government. I was that nerdy kid at age 7 and 8 watching“ Meet the Press” with Tim Russert and“ This Week” with David Brinkley- not George Stephanopolos, but David Brinkley. I knew I wanted to be involved with politics or government in some fashion,” she said.
Undecidedly heading to undergraduate courses at the University of Kentucky, Dr. Tailor settled on a major in political science and a minor in biology. As she applied to medical school at both UK and UofL, the political aspects of health care remained in her thoughts.
“ I figured that government would play a part in what our health care looked like, so I wanted to know more about it,” she explained. While Dr. Tailor would have adapted to either university, a visit to UofL sparked an adoration for the city she would soon call home.
“ UofL impressed me. On our tour date, they had everyone sit in on a lecture the first-years were getting. It was completely over our heads. They were talking about the anatomy of the hand, and we were all sitting there thinking‘ This looks scary.’ But I remember one of the girls turned around after the lecture and said,‘ Don’ t worry. I know this looks overwhelming but it’ ll all be okay.’ It really eased my mind and made me feel like there was real camaraderie here among the medical students.”
Dr. Tailor donned her white coat in 2006, began studying and was thrust almost immediately into organized medicine.“ I knew GLMS provided our white coats, and one of our class officer posi-
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Editor’ s Note: Welcome to Louisville Medicine’ s member spotlight section, Dr. Who? In the interest of simply getting to know each other as a society of colleagues, we’ ll be highlighting random GLMS physicians on a regular basis. If you would like to recommend any GLMS physician member to the Editorial Board for this section, please e-mail aaron. burch @ glms. org or call him at 736-6338.
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