ROCHESTER TEN DAVID A. PAUL

Age: 34
Occupation: MD, MS
Temporary residence: Pittsburgh, PA
Permanent residence: Rochester, NY
Hometown: Grand Rapids, MI

One of David Paul’s first exposures to a hospital came while riding along with his paternal grandfather, Robert L. Brown, a business owner and pastor, during his rounds visiting patients.

“My emotional connection was seeing my grandfather help people, seeing the impact that he had,” said Paul. “Hospitals are where people can be healed.” Today, Paul is a senior neurosurgery resident and neurocritical care fellow at University of Rochester Medical Center and the founder of the conscious coffee brand, Bold and Gritty, as well as an activist, mentor, father and husband.

Next year, he will take over as lead of the brain and spine trauma lab at URMC, a position he’s worked toward his entire life. As someone with many roles, Paul knows it’s impossible to have balance. “You can’t be a neurosurgeon and have balance,” he said. I’ve devoted my life to this. I get energy from doing all these things.”

His energy is evident as he takes a few moments to answer questions through FaceTime from his temporary apartment in Pittsburgh, where he is doing a fellowship with David Okonkwo, MD, one of the best complex spine doctors in the world. Paul adds that he owes much of his success outside of the operating room to his wife, La’ren Lauchie-Paul.

“My wife is my superpower. She pushes me to be better, picks up the slack where I’m not able to,” he said.“You can exponentially increase your capacity for good when you’ve linked up to somebody that shares the same vision as you.”

Their partnership brought a son, Julian Paul,5, into the world and helped launch the Black-owned coffee and lifestyle brand, Bold and Gritty. Their premium coffee roasts are a vehicle for telling stories of Black men who are making a difference in their communities and are pioneers for the next generation. “It is important to share a different narrative than the one people see on TV,” said Paul. “For the individuals who are featured, it gives them more motivation to go out in the community and keep doing what they’re doing.”

Paul exudes the ‘Black excellence’ featured on Gritty’s labels – and does so in a field where not many look like him. “I can relate to people,” he said. “I bring a different cultural nuisance to how I approach problems, how I think through things, how I build teams and relationships.”

Paul not only embodies why representation matters, he uses his platform to be a mentor to others. During his time at URMC, Paul founded the Minority Male Leadership Association, which he still advises, and also served as a mentor for SURF, the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. Emma Strawderman, an MD-Phd candidate at URMC, has worked closely with Paul and experienced his uplifting tutelage firsthand.

“David truly has his mentees’ best interests at heart and will work to help them meet their goals with just as much verve as he approaches his own,” she said.

The brain, his area of expertise, has fascinated Paul from an early age.

“It is the most intricate and complex part of how we were created as human beings, I want to be a part of fixing problems that go wrong with it,” he said.

But he still hearkens back to those visits with his grandfather, and hopes to have the same impact on his son.

“My goal as a parent is that he sees what his mom and dad are doing and realizes that there’s no limit to what he can do,” said Paul. “Black men are multi-faceted, there’s so many things that define who we are besides just our blackness. We are living history.”