Terri Laguna, MD, MSCS, ATSF, the featured speaker at the ATS Diversity Forum on Sunday at the ATS 2025 International Conference, delivered a message that is as simple as it is profound: “The greatest thing you can be is yourself, and you can only be yourself.”

For medical professionals with one or multiple marginal identities, this reminder might be particularly timely.

“We are being hit constantly by messaging from leaders, from the federal administration, from all over the place, that we are less than,” said Dr. Laguna, professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “I want everyone to know that everything you bring, your intersectional identities and who you are, matters.”

Dr. Laguna joked that she should have known she would identify as a Latinx woman who is a member of the LGBTQIA+ community at a young age when she looked back through her family photo album and found a picture of herself wearing a leather jacket on a classic Big Wheel sport-tricycle. However, she acknowledged that she struggled to be herself at times while she was growing up.

Dr. Laguna pursued her medical education and career to achieve one of her childhood aspirations: to help kids like herself who played sports and had asthma. Her journey took her to California, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, and Washington.

Along the way, she became a senior leader in a field where she “viscerally realized that I didn’t look like other people,” often in multiple ways. For example, the Association of American Medical Colleges’ (AAMC) “The State of Women in Academic Medicine 2023-2024” report showed that “women of Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish origin [sic]” comprised only 5.9 percent of all residents from 2022-2023 and only 3.8 percent of full-time faculty from 2013-2023.

In addition to the lack of diversity in the field, Dr. Laguna noted that marginalized groups can often endure hostile environments in the workplace.

Dr. Laguna cited the same AAMC report, which showed that “LGB+ women [sic]” faculty experience sexual harassment at a disproportionate rate compared to other groups. According to the study, 44 percent of women from this group reported that they were harassed, in comparison to 31 percent of women and 12 percent of men overall, respectively, as defined by the study.

Dr. Laguna said her first experience learning to make alliances and professional connections with people “like her” was through the ATS.

“There are not that many people who look like us in our field, and sometimes it takes coming to ATS to find our people,” Dr. Laguna said. “I found my voice, my platform, and my people here at ATS.”

Dr. Laguna identified the formation of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) advisory group within the ATS Pediatrics Assembly as an initiative that changed her life for the better.

Now, Dr. Laguna spends much of her time trying to be a role model for the next generation. She said diverse role models should mentor and sponsor others from diverse backgrounds; think strategically about who to recommend for a talk, leadership position, or writing opportunity; hold themselves and others accountable; create a psychologically safe space around them; and display their vulnerability.

Dr. Laguna added that leaders of the medical profession should not be afraid to challenge the recent attacks on DEI initiatives and accusations that people with diverse backgrounds did not earn their positions.

She referred to a quote from Diana Rodriguez, who helped lead efforts to establish the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, the first LGBTQIA+ visitor center within the National Park Service: “In the name of those who came before me, I pledge to be brave, to be true to myself, and to fight like hell for equality.”

After Dr. Laguna’s lecture, the Diversity Forum recognized the 30 winners of the ATS Underrepresented Trainee Development Scholarship (UTDS) and Kevin Guzman, MD, winner of the ATS Fellowship in Health Equity and Diversity.

The UTDS scholarship covers attendance costs to the ATS conference for scholars from underrepresented communities who are first authors of abstracts or authors of late-breaking abstracts that will be presented at the conference.

The Health Equity and Diversity Fellowship provides up to $40,000 to support the efforts of senior fellows, post-doctoral students, or junior faculty with research, clinical, and policy endeavors to advance health equity for patients with respiratory disease, critical care illness or injury, and sleep-disordered breathing.

The Diversity Forum is organized by the ATS Health Equity and Diversity Committee with the support of the ATS Membership Committee.

The ATS thanks Genentech, Inc. for their generous support of the Diversity Forum.