Meet Dr. Mark Shrime

I’ve spent my career making high-stakes decisions where lives, careers, and futures were on the line. But the hardest decisions weren't always in the operating room. They were the deeply personal ones: how to build a meaningful career, how to avoid burnout, and how to choose a life aligned with purpose instead of expectations.

Today, I helps physicians, executives, and other high-achieving professionals navigate those same questions using a decision-making framework grounded in science, psychology, and lived experience.

I am an internationally renowned speaker, surgeon, author, coach and cat dad. I currently serve as the Editor in Chief of BMJ Global Health. Clinically, I am a head and neck surgical oncologist and microvascular reconstructive surgeon. And as a coach, my work focuses on mid-career burnt-out health professionals who want to create a life they’re in love with again.

Previously, I served as the International Chief Medical Officer at Mercy Ships, as the founding O’Brien Chair of Global Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, as the founder and Director of the Center for Global Surgery Evaluation at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and as the Research Director for the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, where I held the rank of Assistant Professor. 

I trained in otolaryngology, head and neck surgery, and microvascular reconstructive surgery. In 2011, I received a Masters in Public Health with a focus in global health, and in 2015, received my PhD in Health Policy with a focus on the science of decision making.

Clinically, I maintain an active head and neck practice with Mercy Ships, where I focus on large tumors of the head and neck. I work closely with residents from the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons. To date, I’ve worked and taught in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Benin, Togo, Congo, Haiti, Saudi Arabia, Cameroon, Zambia, and Madagascar.

In my academic life, I’ve authored seminal papers on the global burden of surgical disease, the financial burden facing surgical patients, and the number of people who cannot access safe surgery worldwide. I also had the privilege of serving as a co-author on the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery. My academic pursuits focus on decision-making and surgical delivery in low- and middle-income countries, where I have a specific interest in the intersection of health, impoverishment, inequity, and global development. My work aims to determine optimal policies and platforms for surgical delivery that maximize health benefits while simultaneously minimizing the risk of financial catastrophe faced by patients.

Finally, my coaching, writing, and speaking focus on helping people navigate the hardest decisions of their lives. I marry my own experience of creating a life off the beaten path of medicine, with the science of decision-making, to help my clients leverage science-backed, proven frameworks for creating a life of purpose, meaning, and deep contentment.

Why My Coaching Is Different

Most coaching relies on intuition.

Mine combines:

• decades of leadership experience

• behavioral science

• decision theory

• coaching psychology

• real-world experience making difficult decisions

This became the foundation for my Decision-Making Framework—a practical process I've developed to help people move forward when the stakes feel impossibly high.

My book, Solving for Why, has sold nearly 15,000 copies to date.

When I’m not working, I’m a photographer, rock climber, and ninja warrior. I competed on Seasons 8, 9, and 11 of American Ninja Warrior.