Legacy of Excellence Digital Flipbook

LEGACY OF EXCELLENCE: GAYLE E. WOODSON, MD PRESIDENT FROM 2014 – 2015

G ayle E. Woodson, MD, began medical school in 1972 during a wave of women entering the profession. However, like many of her colleagues, she never expected to become President of the AAO-HNS/F. “There were only 12 women otolaryngologists in the country when I was in medical school… and I never even thought about being on the Board until just one day someone said, ‘Oh, you’ve been nominated to be on the Board in the Academy.’ I was kind of shocked.” A Texas native, Dr. Woodson described her upbringing in her June 2015 Bulletin column: “I was born in Galveston, when my father was a medical student at the University of Texas Medical Center and my mother was a pioneering occupational therapist. I grew up in a small town near the Gulf Coast where my father was the family doctor for nearly everyone I knew. We had quarter horses and I was a barrel racer in summer rodeos.” Discussing her career in otolaryngology, as well as her participation in the AAO-HNS/F, she said, “I went to medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the chair of my department was Bobby Alford, who was a great leader with the Academy. He was largely responsible for joining the two organizations [the American Academy of Otolaryngology and the American Council of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery] to form the modern-day American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. “He was very influential, and I just saw him as a real role model. I saw how he interacted with patients. I saw how he could get things done. I saw how he could administer things, how he could run a meeting, how he could get people together to work on a project.” In addition to her medical training at Baylor, she graduated from Rice University and completed two

years of general surgery training at Johns Hopkins Hospital, a residency in otolaryngology at Baylor, and a fellowship in laryngology at the Institute of Laryngology and Otology at the University College, London. Prior to serving as the AAO-HNS/F President, Dr. Woodson held other leadership positions throughout her career, including but not limited to president of the Society of University Otolaryngologists-Head and Neck Surgeons in 1997 and president of the American Laryngological Association in 2006. In her first Bulletin column as President, Dr. Woodson wrote, “In the ’90s, I remember feeling fear that our

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