“You’re probably going to hate this case. You won’t be able to see, it will take forever, and this guy will be in the hospital a week from now and will still be doing poorly. I hope you ate a good lunch.”

The well-meaning chief resident who gave me this warning was absolutely wrong. Even as a second-year medical student with the rare chance to shadow in the operating room, it only took observing 1 radical cystectomy to set my life’s course in a new and decisive direction.

The desire to become a surgeon initially steered me to medical school and away from my family’s 5-generation farming operation. Seeing a future mentor perform a radical cystectomy and neobladder for the first time cemented my decision to pursue urology, and ultimately urologic oncology.

Fast-forward more than 10 years, and my career aspiration to complete fellowship training in urologic oncology in order to work as a leader and educator at a comprehensive cancer center has come to fruition. Since that very first transformational experience in the operating room I have had a nearly singular goal of improving both patient survival and treatment-related quality of life in bladder cancer. Continuing to collaborate with patients and researchers to drive the treatment evolution in this disease will be my professional hallmark. Receiving the AUA Young Urologist of the Year Award is a tremendous and unexpected honor and, I would like to think, an (over)acknowledgment by some well-meaning peers of the passion I have for delivering urologic cancer care.

And yet, almost none of the credit for this success belongs to me. First, I owe a long line of mentors both in and out of medicine tremendous gratitude for all that they have done to help me along my journey. I hope that by the end of my career, numerous mentees look to me as someone who was a positive influence and a strong advocate, sponsor, collaborator, and coach. I certainly am forever grateful for many impactful mentors thus far in my own career.

Likewise, I owe my colleagues and my multidisciplinary partners who work together to enable us to provide world-class urologic cancer care at Washington University. I owe all of the hidden figures—the OR nurses, the schedulers, the residents and fellows, and our clinical staff, among many others—a huge acknowledgement for their tireless efforts to improve the health of our community.

I owe a debt to every patient who has contributed to my education from medical school through the current day by placing their trust in me to safeguard their well-being and act in a fiduciary manner. The value of this trust cannot be overstated, particularly for an early career surgeon.

I would not be here if not for my physician spouse, who has been faithfully by my side throughout my entire training and early career, simultaneously caring for others and somehow raising 2 wonderful daughters and tolerating my antics.

The reality is, there are many, many urologists more deserving of this award. To receive it is both a professional honor and a challenge to go to work every day and feel the same excitement that I felt the first time I saw ileum sewn together watertight to try to provide some normalcy for another human fighting against a lethal disease. I hope that such excitement continues to permeate through my time spent with patients.

In summary, I wish to say thank you. Thank you to all those who have taken the time to guide me, to inspire me, to challenge me, and to count me as a friend and a peer.

Beyond expressing gratitude, I also want to try to pay it forward. If you are reading this as a trainee and don’t have a mentor, email me. I may not have the right words or advice, but I will certainly try hard to help you find the person that does. I owe everything I’ve accomplished in medicine to many others who have done the same for me.