What draws you to medicine and to women’s health in particular? What’s exciting about it? What's fulfilling?
Surgery truly embodies the art and science of a profession. I am able to share very intimate and life-changing moments of patient lives in clinic, and I spend my OR days doing precise and mechanical operative work. Nothing is ever the same each day, and this is what makes the work challenging and rewarding.
Women’s health in particular combines clinical medicine with healthcare advocacy, and it’s a continuously evolving, multidimensional field. If a patient is presenting for evaluation of a new breast cancer, there are countless other factors in her physical and emotional health influencing how she will experience the diagnosis and treatment. I always tell patients that we can treat their cancer, but we want to make sure we care for everything else in their life as well.
How did your career unfold?
Very circuitously. I was a history major at Bowdoin, and wrote my senior honors thesis on the sterilization of Native American women by the Indian Health Service in the 1970s. This made me interested in direct patient care. So, after graduating from Bowdoin, I found a job at a women’s health center in inner-city Philadelphia. This led me to pursue a postbaccalaureate pre-medical program, and I eventually went to medical school at Dartmouth.
During surgery residency, I used my research years to pursue a global health fellowship in East Africa. I lived and worked at Cornell’s partner hospital in Tanzania for three years, and I returned as faculty after residency graduation. This was when I realized breast surgery was a specialty I could practice anywhere in the world, and it had significant cross over with public health and advocacy. I subsequently gave birth to my son during my breast surgical oncology fellowship, and this spurred my career trajectory into breastfeeding and lactation medicine.
What brought you to Bowdoin? What was your experience at the College like?
I was actually a transfer student from Georgetown University. I was recruited there for tennis, and a series of injuries made me reconsider what I wanted from my college experience. I had loved writing since childhood, and I realized that a small liberal arts college would best let me explore this. On a visit to Bowdoin, I fell in love with the Maine coastline and never looked back.
My experience at the College was exactly what I had envisioned. It was an incredible education and really challenged me to look at the world in a way I had never considered before.
What inspires you?
My son is a huge inspiration—I wrote a children’s book (Cut Here: A Surgeon Mom’s Letter to her Little Boy) describing this. I am inspired by women’s health advocacy of all kinds. I wrote a well-received op ed in our local paper, the Independent, about the SCOTUS decision two years ago and it resulted in the development of the Santa Barbara Women’s Health Coalition. I’m also very passionate about educating other health care providers through speaking and maintaining my website.
Is there something about the work you do that others would find surprising?
My work today combines breast surgery, breastfeeding medicine, and perinatal mental health. It’s probably surprising that surgery is the easiest part of this job. Breastfeeding medicine involves at least two patients and organ systems—a mom and baby—and often more with adult partners in the mix. It can be extremely complicated, and even more so when mental health overlaps.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
The beach is probably our favorite place in the world. We also have a teardrop camper and love exploring off the grid in California and the mountain west. I have been lucky to travel quite a bit with speaking at international lactation conferences, so it has been nice to show my son new parts of the world that way.
Other than that, I still love to read and write like my Bowdoin days. I joke that my website is like a second child in terms of the amount of time I spend maintaining it, and I really enjoy that as a creative outlet when I’m not at my “day job.”
Favorite Bowdoin memory? Or best thing you learned at Bowdoin?
Driving around in my old Volvo with my best friend, Monica, blasting the radio, and soaking in those endless, bright blue Maine summer days.
I don’t think I realized before Bowdoin that a liberal arts education can be the foundation of any profession—and in fact, it’s the best gift anyone can receive before embarking upon adulthood.
This story first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Bowdoin Magazine. Manage your subscription and see other stories from the magazine on the Bowdoin Magazine website.
