“It is so simple that the body is connected to each other. I don’t know how medicine came to the idea to treat organ by organ and not think that there might be a connection there.” – Dr. Leila Soudah, CEO
Dr. Leila Soudah emerged as an inspiration for women leaders who are paving their way into the world of healthcare, especially in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Having her family’s distress as an inspiration itself, Leila committed herself to helping women in need. Leila’s mother, who lived in Hayfa, now in Israel, experienced the brutal consequences of war. As the English Army killed her mother’s father and kicked her mother, along with Leila and her siblings, out of their home, they had to walk to Nablus, where they had their relatives.
Their entire family went through hell. As Leila’s mother’s sister missed all her vaccinations during that time, she suffered from Pyomelities that left her half-paralyzed. Being a Palestinian herself, Leila experienced two wars in her life. Knowing the sufferings of the women of her family, and later on, her mother’s struggle to earn money to help Leila’s dad feed them, compelled her to do something to help women in every way possible.
The Biggest Challenges in the Way
While sharing the biggest challenges that she faced as a woman entrepreneur in the healthcare sector, Leila shared about being mistreated as a Middle-Eastern woman. She shares, “Not only as a woman but also as a woman from the Middle East, you are automatically treated as whatever and however educated you are, it is not the same as a European.”
As she continued to share about the hurdles in her way, she shared an anecdote from her life, where in an interview, a doctor threw her post-graduation certificate from the biggest universities of Berlin and a Facharztin für gynecology and geburthilfe certificate from Germany that she studied for 15 years to get.
While sharing this incident, Leila mentioned that had she been blonde with blue eyes, the doctor wouldn’t have dared to disrespect her.
She was the first one in the Middle East to have pursued that certificate, and the doctor had no idea about it. This shows the way racism clouds the judgment of some people, making it hard for medical professionals like Dr. Leila Soudah to establish a position of their own in the healthcare sector.
Being Over the Moon
Tracing back to her career journey, Leila experienced several moments of pride that made her proud of herself. Despite surviving two wars as a Palestinian, resilient, and self-made woman, she refused to give up on herself. Leila traveled a long journey from being a small girl without a home country, working as a cleaning woman, a maid, a babysitter, a caregiver for an elder patient, a hospital cleaner, a nurse assistant, a nurse, a midwife, to becoming a doctor.
Leila faced the accusation of being a terrorist by her professor simply because she was from Palestine. However, she never gave up until she forced her professor to congratulate her one day for saving the lives of a mother and her baby.
A Breakthrough in Anti-aging and Regenerative Medicine
Leila had a significant interest in the specialized area of anti-aging and regenerative medicine, as she felt that traditional medicine did not look at women holistically. There are only symptom-based diagnoses treated with one prescription. However, she wanted to go deep into finding the root cause of the sickness by focusing on prevention and ensuring longevity. This is the reason she expanded into this area of medicine in 2013.
The Philosophy Behind the DLS Weight Loss Program
Leila’s DLS Weight Loss Program was introduced, keeping in mind the issue of PCOS patients being overweight in the OBGYN clinic. In her view, being overweight leads to high insulin, which is the reason for inflammation. Nowadays, being overweight is the reason behind almost all our sicknesses, like hypertension, high cholesterol, heart attacks, and cancer. By relying on this philosophy, the program was launched to help obese women suffering from PCOS reduce their weight to prevent them from getting other diseases.
A View on Cosmetic Gynecology
While sharing her view on cosmetic gynecology, Leila articulated, “I was the first doctor doing cosmetic gynecology as I started in 2015, and I faced a lot of trouble and attacks that it is not moral to do so. And now OBGYN doctors do not want to do medicine anymore; they all want to do cosmetic gynecology.” In this regard, she advises all the ladies to pursue it for themselves and not for their partners. It is their body, and they have the right to look the way they want to. Leila finds it amusing that most of the cosmetic gynecologists are men, not women.
A Leadership of Women’s Empowerment
Leila considers leadership as a mode of teaching and empowering women to stand on their feet and improve themselves on a daily basis to become leaders one day. She takes immense pride in her team, and the way they have improved themselves feels amazing to her.
Guiding Women Entrepreneurs in Medicine
Dr. Leila advises aspiring women leaders not to stop learning. By learning, she doesn’t mean reading a book or an article. She means to pursue new fellowships and new universities in different countries.
Envisioning the Future of DLS Clinic
As the CEO of DR. Leila Soudah Clinic, Leila wants to take a step forward by establishing a Fibromyalgia clinic, for which she has already started with the necessary steps. According to her, Fibromyalgia is underestimated, not properly understood, and often neglected as it is mostly a woman’s sickness. Women suffering from this illness are often labeled as crazy, pill-dependent, and badly treated, as witnessed by Leila. By recognizing the lack of awareness and treatment concerning the disease, she is working on establishing the clinic in the years to come.
