Nancy L. Ascher, MD, PhD, FACS
Presented by Hillary J. Braun, MD and Peter G. Stock, MD, FACS
Dr. Nancy L. Ascher was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She attended the University of Michigan for undergraduate and medical school before completing her surgical training in general surgery and transplantation at the University of Minnesota, where she was the first woman to perform a liver transplant. She created the liver transplant program at Minnesota before moving to California in 1988 to start the liver transplant program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She has held numerous leadership positions throughout her career including president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and president of The Transplantation Society. She was also chair of the department of surgery at UCSF for 17 years. Throughout the arc of her career, she has made liver transplant into a clinical reality and helped lead the use of living donor liver transplant in the United States. She has cared for thousands of transplant patients and mentored hundreds of students, residents, and fellows who consider her to be the single most important influence in their professional careers.
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Edward Barksdale Jr., MD, FACS
Presented by Henri Ford, MD, MHA, FACS, MAMSE, FRCSEng (HON), FAAP
Edward M. Barksdale, Jr., MD, is professor of surgery & pediatrics at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, and chief surgical officer of the Chicagoland Children’s Health Alliance. An honors graduate and All-American fencer at Yale, he earned his MD from Harvard Medical school. He trained in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and served as chief of the West Surgery Service, the first African American to hold this distinction along with Dr. Lynt Johnson. After completing a fellowship in pediatric surgery in Cincinnati, he joined the faculty at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and the U. of Pittsburgh. He became professor of surgery prior to becoming surgeon-in-chief at Rainbow Babies. He has served as president of the American Pediatric Surgical Association and the Society of Black Academic Surgeons (SBAS). Currently, he is 2nd Vice President of the American College of Surgeons. A recognized educator and mentor, he founded the SBAS Leadership Academy and is a member of the ACS Academy of Master Surgeon Educators. His work focuses on empowering “the least, the lost, and the left behind.”
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Jon A. van Heerden, MBCHB, FRCS(C), FACS, FRCS(Edin)(Hon)
Presented by David R. Farley, MD, FACS and Nancy D. Perrier, MD, FACS
Dr. Jon van Heerden is a native of South Africa and joined the Mayo Clinic general surgery training program in Rochester, MN in 1965. Jon was hired on staff at Mayo in 1972 and enjoyed more than 31 years of a surgical career that included some 28,000 operations, publishing 500+ surgical articles, and training hundreds of residents and students. He was named the Fred C. Andersen Professor of Surgery at Mayo and enjoyed national and international recognition giving hundreds of presentations along the way to becoming president of numerous surgical societies (Western, AAES, IAES) and creating dozens of endocrine surgery courses worldwide. In retirement from clinical practice, Dr. van Heerden has continued for 20+ years to commit his time and talents to surgical education at the Medical University of South Carolina.
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Frank J. Veith, MD, FACS
Presented by Anton Sidawy, MD, FACS
Dr. Veith graduated from Cornell with honors and completed his residency at the Peter Bent Brigham hospital of Harvard University. In the 1970s and 1980s, he performed pioneering work in lung transplantation. His clinical interest involved vascular surgery focusing on limb revascularizations. Dr. Veith was the first to advocate an aggressive approach to saving threatened limbs when most patients with this problem underwent amputation. In the late 1980s, Dr. Veith became involved with endovascular treatments. His group performed the first US endovascular aneurysm repair or EVAR. They were also the first to treat ruptured AAAs by EVAR. Dr. Veith has been a leader in every national and international vascular society. He has been a leading advocate for the recognition of vascular surgery as a separate, distinct specialty. Dr. Veith has received numerous honors as a leader and innovator. He is now professor of surgery at NYU and the Cleveland Clinic where he is the Liebig Chair in Vascular Surgery. Dr. Veith leads the largest vascular surgery meeting held annually in New York City. In 2010, he received the Society for Vascular Surgery Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2013 an endowed Veith Chair was established in his honor at NYU. In 2018 The Frank J. Veith International Society was established by his trainees, colleagues, and friends to honor his achievements in vascular surgery. In 2022 the SVS established the Frank J Veith Lectureship on limb salvage to begin annually at their Vascular Annual Meeting in June 2023.
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