LATINA STYLE Inc.

Francelis Ivette Gonzalez M.D

I decided to move to the United States looking for a better life for my children. As a general pediatrician working in a very small town in Puerto Rico, I wanted to challenge myself and decided to pursue a subspecialty in pediatric cancer. I started my subspecialty in pediatric hematology and oncology at Emory University in Atlanta in 1992 followed by a period at the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital in California, and later the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle where I completed training in Bone Marrow Transplantation. Eventually we would move to Florida, longing to be close to our family and our beautiful island of Puerto Rico.

Upon moving to Orlando, I was offered a position with a medical group in Orlando opening a brand new office. When the office closed shortly after, I started looking for more alternatives. My parents, who were my strongest advisors, had by then relocated to Central Florida and helped me out with my youngest son. I decided then to explore the possibility of opening my own clinic. I was offered and accepted a position at Heart of Florida Medical Center in Haines City, which also offered me the opportunity to establish my own office in that town. I remember at that time asking my parents for their advice and as always, they wisely told me to wait for the sign of the Lord-and the sign came to me!

I started my first pediatric clinic in Haines City with my husband joining me as the practice administrator. We purchased our first building in a newly built medical office park close to the hospital and started hiring physicians to service the many patients who came to our clinic on a daily basis. At the same time, I accepted a part-time position with the Pediatric Hematology /Oncology Group at Florida Hospital in Orlando.

Eventually we opened an office in Kissimmee and after two years in business, bought our own building: Kidsville Pediatrics II was born. I opened a third practice in Clermont while holding another part-time position as a pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist at St. Joseph Hospital in Tampa but finally decided to stop practicing my subspecialty in order to dedicate my time and efforts to the offices. My biggest challenge has always been identifying and hiring physicians who will treat my patients in the way they are accustomed: as family.

During the summer of 2010, my son Dr. Carlos Estrella Gonzalez joined Kidsville Pediatrics as a provider at our Clermont office. He is also part of the medical staff at South Lake Hospital and has been warmly welcomed by all the patients. Sometime after, my middle son joined us as a practice manager for Kidsville Pediatrics.

The Kidsville Pediatrics East Orlando office, which opened in 2006, will soon become a state-of-the- art facility. We just purchased a building on Lake Underhill which will be expanded to a 5000-square-feet facility to serve the East Orlando community.

Taking into account the economy and the challenges surrounding it, in January of 2011 I came up with the idea of offering our patients another alternative and this led to our first After-Hours Walk-In Clinic. The clinic provides service after regular business hours for parents. This new concept has been quite successful and we have been able to decrease the number of visits of our patients to the emergency room and the number of hospital admissions.

My satisfaction at this moment is the success of this family-owned business. Our combined efforts have helped us succeed. A well-known workaholic, I still have many more projects in mind and hopefully will be able to keep expanding my practices in order to continue offering excellent pediatric services to all Central Florida communities. We are deeply involved in the community and have been recognized and honored by many local organizations.

When I am approached by a new graduate medical doctor who wants to start his/her own practice, I always let them know that they need to be hard workers, believe in themselves and most importantly, persevere in order to succeed!