He might say his work as a doctor isn’t too different from his past life as a mechanic.
Carl Allamby operated on cars in the East Cleveland neighborhood where he grew up and continued working under the hood for the next three decades.
Today, at 47, he is a resident at Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital, on his way to becoming Dr. Allamby.
“He’s got people skills most doctors don’t start out with — that customer relations mentality from his years in business,” Dr. Steven Brooks, chair of emergency medicine at Akron General, tells Cleveland.com. “We were blown away by him.”
Allamby graduated high school with less than a 2.0 grade point average (GPA) and never thought college was for him.
“I don’t remember a single person talking to me about college,” Allamby says. “For us, it was mostly going and finding a factory job or go to the military. I ended up finding a job.”
He went on to sell auto parts and work on cars for the next 25 years, eventually owning two successful mechanic shops and selling used cars. Patrons say he “worked nonstop” and could diagnose and fix your car “in his sleep.”
After small business success, Allamby wanted to add another credential to his résumé: a b business degree. “I just felt like if I really wanted to grow this and grow it right, I really needed a foundational education in business to really understand it,” he says.
In 2006, many years after high school, he enrolled in night classes at Ursuline College. As part of the core curriculum, Allamby realized he’d have to take biology — but avoided it as long as he could.
“My argument was, ‘I’m here for business. Why do I even need to take a biology class?’” he says. Still, he knew he’d need it to graduate. What he didn’t expect was how much he’d love it — thanks to an inspiring teacher.
Around this time, Allamby realized that being a doctor was something he’d always dreamed of, but because he’s a black man, never thought it was an option for him.
Studies show black patients get healthier with black doctors treating them. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study found that black men, who have the lowest life expectancy in the US, are more likely to discuss their symptoms and trust the advice of a black doctor.
Unfortunately, the Association of American Medical Colleges finds that less than 6% of med school grads are black. Studies show this result is partly because less students of color are encouraged to pursue STEM careers.
“Somewhere through junior high and high school, that had gotten beaten out of me,” Allamby says, adding that he lacked role models. “Nobody to even emulate. Just to say, ‘Hey, I know a guy who is a doctor who looks like me and if he can do it, I can do it.’”
After befriending two black doctors, Drs. Kenneth Lane and David Headen, he felt emboldened: “It was just incredible, the support they gave me, saying, ‘You can do it. This is totally possible.’ ”
Allamby earned his business degree with a 3.98 GPA, then began studying science basics at Cuyahoga Community College. That’s where a chemistry teacher told him about a new program at Cleveland State University (CSU) that would prepare him for the Medical College Admission Test, and potentially land him a spot at Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED), thanks to an initiative by the Partnership for Urban Health to bring more minorities into medical careers.
With the help of more supportive instructors — who even provided him with free used books for studying — he aced courses and eventually moving on to two more years at CSU, and then passed his med school entrance exam in 2015.
That’s about the time when Allamby had to close his auto-repair businesses. “It was like, ‘Finally, I am free of this, and I can go after something I’ve always wanted,’ ” he says.
Medical school was met with almost impossible odds: He had a wife, two school-aged children plus two grown from a previous marriage. Allamby would also be in school full time, so he’d have no income and take on more debt.
“The stakes were high, like, ‘Man I really can’t fail,’ ” he tells his local news outlet. There were days he asked himself, “How am I ever going to get this down and also spend time with my kids?” But his supportive family made it work. “My wife would tell me, ‘Hey, we’re OK. Go do some studying. Do whatever you have to do and get it done.’ ”
While praised for his work ethic and compassion, Allamby says it’s his role as one of the few black doctors — not only in the hospital, but in the world — that makes the most positive impact.
“There are so many times throughout the different hospitals where I will walk in, and [a black patient] will say, ‘Thank God, there’s finally a brother here,’” he says. “I think you remove a lot of those barriers when there is a person there who looks like you.”
Allamby plans to encourage aspiring black doctors by mentoring as much as possible: “When I speak at a junior high or high school, I tell the kids, ‘Hey, if you are interested in medicine, reach out to me, because I will help you as much as I can.’ ”
