A Driving Force
First responder and Land Rover-lover Dr. Elizabeth Greig takes the wheel in a promotional campaign
By Bob Woods
Photography by Martin Juul Photography
I
f there’s an exemplar of the nebulous expression “You are what you drive,” it’s Elizabeth Greig, M.D. ’10. “I’ve had a real thing for Land Rovers since I was a little kid,” said Dr. Greig, recalling her wonder years in England, where her family moved from Philadelphia. That’s also where she nurtured a lifelong passion for the rugged, British-made Land Rover, introduced in 1948 as a precursor to the now-ubiquitous SUV. “It’s my kind of car, and I’ve always driven one,” she said.
Appropriately, Dr. Greig is a multipurpose rover herself. She landed back in the States for high school, majored in history at the University of Pennsylvania (while also coaching the men’s water polo team and playing on the women’s squad) and then worked as a global health care consultant in Philadelphia and Boston, an integral experience that shaped her career. “That’s when I decided to go to medical school,” Dr. Greig said.
She chose the Miller School largely for its global health opportunities. During her first year, she was part of a team that traveled to Haiti to provide medical assistance and subsequently conducted a research project on how to improve emergency management and disaster relief services on the island nation. “We presented the report to the Haitian Ministry of Health and the prime minister in 2009,” Dr. Greig said.
Around that same time, the Miller School established the Global Institute for Community Health and Development, an offshoot of Project Medishare, a nonprofit founded in 1994 to enhance health care in Haiti by faculty members Arthur Fournier, M.D., and Barth Green, M.D., currently executive dean for global health and community service.
In the days following the January 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, the two entities joined forces, sending dozens of medical volunteers to aid survivors. Among them was Dr. Greig, then in her fourth year, whose research paper was suddenly put into action. “We set up a field hospital in Port-au-Prince as part of a massive, emergency-response operation,” she said.
Following an internal medicine residency at Weill Cornell Hospital in New York and a four-year faculty position at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Greig returned to the Miller School in 2017. Today, she’s an assistant professor of medicine, treats patients at a UHealth facility on Fisher Island and at UM/Jackson Memorial Hospital, and, not at all coincidentally, is co-director of the Global Institute, which continues to manage programs in Haiti, as well as in the Bahamas and locally. “We also run the global health pathway for residents and undergraduates,” she said.
And yes, she’s still behind the wheel of a Land Rover, specifically a 2023 Defender 110. Dr. Greig is such a devotée that she was recently selected by marketers of the brand (now part of India’s Tata Motors) to appear in an ad campaign featuring owners. “There’s a foldout with photos of me in the car and text about who I am, what I do and how I use my Defender,” she said. “I’ve sort of become a literal poster child for Defender.” 
