A Conversation With… Rep. Nabeela Syed, About Listening and Changing Minds

Abstract

I f you're reading this, odds are you're an overachiever. Some residents entering our profession overcame 100-to-1 ratios of applications to program slots. And many of the readers here are the professors teaching those overachieving characters. Very impressive. Perhaps that's why the "A Conversation With…" section of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research ® is so well read. Recent guests have included an international aerobatic champion who became a PhD engineering professor [2], a bestselling author [5], and an Olympic alternate in fencing who now is an orthopaedic resident [4]. Overachievers, just like you. This month's guest fits right in. Ms. Nabeela Syed became Illinois Representative Syed in late 2022, at the tender age of 23, garnering some fairly dramatic coverage in the national media along the way [6, 8]. Impressive, sure, but stir this into the mix: Rep. Syed-a Muslim woman whose parents immigrated to Palatine, IL from Hyderabad, India-turned a solidly red district blue, defeating a two-term Republican incumbent. She did this by knocking on more than 20,000 doors herself in the predominantly Republican northwest suburbs of Chicago. In a hijab. But door-knocking doesn't cause people to change affiliations, and CORR isn't red or blue. This is about a person, what makes her special, and what we can learn from her. Rep. Syed has the rare 1