By Surrey Hospitals Foundation
At age four, Dr. Marietta Van Den Berg decided she would become a doctor to help people. What began as a simple childhood conviction became a guiding principle: to make a meaningful difference, even if only for one person.
That purpose sharpened early in her career as she began to see more clearly where her efforts mattered most, in places where care was missing and systems fell short. Over time, she came to understand herself as “…a big picture person,” she says. “I’ve learned to zoom in and focus on the people and the details and zoom out to see the overall picture.”
Today, as Clinical Lead of the Surrey Urgent Response Centre for Mental Health and Substance Use and Site Medical Director at Surrey Memorial Hospital, she leads with that instinct. To see what’s missing and build what doesn’t yet exist.
Early in her career in South Africa, while serving in the military medical services, she recognized a critical gap. Patients with spinal cord injuries were not receiving the rehabilitation needed to regain meaningful function. At the time, physiatry (physical medicine and rehabilitation) was not an established specialty in the country.
So she set out to change that.
While studying international programs, she designed her own training pathway and gathered the expertise needed to build something entirely new. It was a coordinated model that supported patients from intensive care through rehabilitation, significantly improving their lives.
Identify the gap, understand it thoroughly, and build the structure needed to close it.
This approach shaped her leadership across palliative care and infectious diseases, and now in Surrey, where she helped design integrated, team-based responses to mental health and substance use, including the Urgent Response Center.
For Dr. Van Den Berg, leadership is not about title or authority. It is a tool that enables her to scale the original promise from helping one person at a time to improving the care of many.
“I think being a woman in medicine and in leadership requires the courage that comes with conviction. I am doing the right things for the right reasons.”
That conviction is shaped by the women who came before her.
Her great-grandmother survived a concentration camp during the Boer War, carrying forward the belief that even the most difficult experiences can be endured. Her grandmother, raising a family during a civil war in rural Zimbabwe, showed relentless focus and determination amid uncertainty.
She learned compassion from her mother, who often visited the SPCA, walking along the cages looking for the ugliest, grumpiest, or most unlovable animals to bring home because she believed everyone, no matter who they are, deserves love and safety.
These lessons live on in Dr. Van Den Berg’s work[CK1] .
In health care, the people most at risk of falling through the cracks are often those with the most complex needs, including those navigating mental health challenges or substance use, or living within systems not designed with them in mind. Dr. Van Den Berg has built her career on ensuring those patients are not overlooked but supported through thoughtful, coordinated care.
Her leadership, however, has also required her to turn that lens inward.
There have been moments of challenge. Times when her leadership was tested, when outcomes did not match her effort, and when she was forced to reflect deeply on how she could grow. These experiences, though difficult, reinforced something she had learned long before. That growth often comes through discomfort.
“I’ve learned I can do hard things,” she says. “I can tolerate difficult feelings. I can keep getting better.”
That mindset continues to shape not only how she leads but also how she lives, including as a mother.
“Becoming a mother was the most terrifying and beautiful moment of my life,” she reflects. Like her work, her motherhood has evolved, shaped by listening to her children, growing alongside them, and the ongoing effort to do better.
To other women, she offers this advice. Hold your course and keep your eyes on your purpose. Give yourself credit. Allow yourself to sit with difficult feelings, because growth happens there. You do not have to be perfect. You just have to keep getting better.
And to her mother, who passed away in 1997, Dr. Van Den Berg offers a simple message.
“Thank you for always having a lap for me, even when I chose not to sit on it.”
