Psychiatry Staff Spotlight: Robert Cole

What don’t I do?! The job of COO at Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC) entails working simultaneously at multiple levels and on multiple tasks, and runs the gamut from leading and managing all the administrative aspects of the organization, solving complicated and often unpredictable problems as they occur, collaborating with colleagues inside and outside the organization on strategic initiatives as well as operational planning, mentoring and supporting the work of faculty, staff and trainees, continuously integrating state and university resources in a cohesive manner, translating priorities, rules and policies back and forth between the two parent bodies, carrying out special projects and initiatives on behalf of the CEO and other members of the executive leadership team and covering for the CEO in their absence.

Learning from the ground up about the public mental health system together with a fascination with the organizational complexity of CMHC’s state-university partnership.

I love working with extraordinarily talented individuals who have a deep and abiding commitment to making people’s lives better.

I’m looking forward to enhanced work-life balance.

I would love to have coffee and hang out with Eleanor Roosevelt.

I love walking just about anywhere outdoors -- walking trails, the beach, in my neighborhood, wherever. When the spirit moves me, I enjoy cooking and baking. It’s an opportunity to be creative and see reasonably rapid results. And I love taking day trips, often on the spur of the moment, with my partner.

I am not a bucket list kind of guy. The idea of accumulating a collection of experiences is not something I can relate to. I believe in spontaneity and in the significance of seemingly small things and small moments.