Imagine a fellow practicing physician who just happens to be a licensed financial planner dedicated to empowering our whole physician community.

That’s me! My unifying professional mission is to advance social justice by treating, empowering and educating everyone I encounter with relentless humanism, optimism and pragmatism. I fulfill that mission with two parallel professional roles: a practicing, non-invasive cardiologist; and an entrepreneur/financial planner for the physician community.

DocEmpowered embodies my second professional role – an independent financial planning firm I founded whose sole mission is to give fellow physicians the power to serve their patients, families and communities on their own terms.

I practiced as a full-time academic cardiologist from 2015 through 2023. During that time, I distinguished myself as an educator, winning both local and national teaching and humanism awards. During my last year, unexpected changes in my position forced me to choose between being the husband and father I wanted to be, and the academic cardiologist career to which I had devoted nearly a decade. Complicating this was the fact that my job had an 18-month/20-mile non-compete clause, my wife could not move without disrupting her career, we had two young children and a mortgage, and I had not even started thinking about a job search.

Thankfully, my wife Andrea and I had a solid financial foundation and had spent years putting ourselves in a position of financial strength. After running the numbers, we made the calculated risk for me to resign without a job offer in hand. We successfully rode out the next 18 months – without uprooting our family, hurting Andrea’s career or disrupting the wellness of our kids – and I now freely practice medicine on my own terms. As of January 2025, I now practice cardiology part-time in two settings: a) as a direct contractor for Sage Health, a value-based care start-up providing concierge care for vulnerable Medicare Advantage seniors in Baltimore, and b) as a locum tenens cardiologist at UPMC Western Maryland, where I greatly enjoy serving patients from a beautiful, mountainous part of my state. I am also a regular expert faculty contributor to Hippo Education’s Primary Care Review & Perspectives CME Podcast. I now prioritize my health, Andrea’s career and wellness, and my children more than ever before.

I also became an advocate for career flexibility in the American College of Cardiology (ACC) as well as an advocate against non-compete clauses for employed healthcare workers. Thanks to the incredible work of my colleagues in the Maryland chapter of the ACC, we helped pass H.B. 1388 in 2024, which made non-compete clauses illegal for healthcare workers making under $350k (the hospital lobby managed a carveout for physicians making over $350k, but no more than 1-year/10-miles).

I will never forget the personal satisfaction of standing in the Annapolis state house and watching our governor sign that bill into law so that many physicians in the future will never have to go through what I was enduring personally. As the current Chair of Maryland ACC’s Advocacy Committee, some of my most important work is advocating for the changes needed to benefit our patients and our profession.

My story could have been completely different. Trapped by my mortgage, my non-compete, and the financial needs of my family, I could have stayed at my old job and burned out as my health, marriage and family slowly paid the price. But it didn’t happen, and I decided to pour myself into the study of the area that had made my own transformation possible: financial planning. After completing a Certificate of Financial Planning from Emory University, I sat for and passed the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ examination, one of the most highly respected accomplishments for financial planners. I then passed my Series 65 Investment Adviser Licensing Exam and created DocEmpowered, LLC, a regulated financial planning firm. As a bona fide member of the financial planning industry, my mission is to help fellow physicians align their careers and lives with their values with a professionally-developed financial plan.

DocEmpowered is a celebration of physician agency, wellness, and empowerment. If you are open to transformative growth that will give you the power to chart your own career and life according to your values, schedule a free meeting with me to see how DocEmpowered can help.