Dolly Klock RES’01, MD, always knew that she would don a white coat one day. For the only child growing up outside of Los Angeles, childhood games were closer to “House M.D.” than “house.”

She nicknamed herself Dr. Pillowsman and would page herself on an imaginary overhead announcement system. “My parents weren’t doctors—I think I just really loved my pediatrician,” she says with a smile.

Klock enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, intending to pursue a premedical path. But the overwhelming curriculum coupled with a lack of connection at the huge university sparked a “mid-college crisis” that pushed her toward other passions: art history and psychology.

Then one day, thumbing through a magazine, an advertisement caught her eye. It was an image of a young female physician listening to a child’s heart, with a stethoscope. Klock says she started crying. It was a poignant reminder of her childhood dream. “I decided in that moment to stay the course,” she says. It was the doubt and introspection that ultimately assured her that medicine would be the right fit.

She dove into premed studies with a will, and her hard work paid off in the form of a ticket to Albany, NY, for medical school. There, she fell in love with ob/gyn as well as pediatrics, plus she enjoyed working with male patients. “Family medicine was kind of like the perfect way to sort of bridge it all,” she says. She also fell in love with Jon Doris RES’01, MD, now her husband, at Albany Medical College. They applied to the Couples Match for residency and, with that, found themselves in Providence.

Klock loved her time at Brown. It was during residency that Doris’s best friend from college, Bill Lawrence, approached the couple with a proposal: He wanted to interview them about their daily lives for a sitcom about medical residents.

“We were like, it’s not going to be funny, Bill. Our lives are not funny,” Klock recalls. But she and Doris ate their words when Lawrence showed them the pilot episode: “This guy is an absolute comedic genius, and so, of course, it was hilarious, right?” That pilot turned into the legendary show Scrubs, which ran for nine seasons and starred Zach Braff as J.D., a character loosely based on Doris. Klock herself influenced the character Elliot—along with a visiting character later in the show, Molly Klock.

Klock continued to serve as a medical adviser for Scrubs after residency, a “fantastically fun experience.” The showrunners called for her help with everything from props and set design to writing “bits of medical jargon” in the script.

As she transitioned into family medicine practice in greater LA, Klock realized that her powers of communication were coming in handy with an unexpected demographic. “My favorite patients were always the young adults,” she says. “But I was struck by how uncomfortable parents are with the adolescent years.”

Klock knew she had to do something different. “How do you talk with kids about puberty? How do you talk about where babies come from? What I noticed is a lack of support for parents of teens.”

She bridged that gap with Adolessons. Klock, a radiant and captivating speaker, connects with families in a wide range of speaking engagements and workshops, during a transformative time in a child’s life: the middle years.

Allegra Richdale, a mother in West Hollywood, CA, has engaged with Adolessons since its inception. At libraries and local events, Klock would teach children about puberty by meeting them where they were. Word spread like lightning, and the organization grew exponentially. “She brought parents a lot of relief,” Richdale says. “I could sense that a lot of moms were very grateful for the way she broached these topics—factual, accessible, and with so much humor.”

Klock has two college-aged children with Doris, a cardiac electrophysiologist. The family lived in the Pacific Palisades until earlier this year, when they were displaced by the wildfires. But she is still working to connect with struggling kids and parents, including sharing knowledge and resources through her Instagram account, @adolessonsla.

“Teens get such a bad rap,” Klock says. “It’s important for us all to slow down and have empathy. We need to have conversations and really get to know our kids.”