Anna Marie Ledgerwood, MD, FACS, is the 2025 recipient of the Dr. Mary Edwards Walker Inspiring Women in Surgery Award.
Dr. Ledgerwood is a general and trauma surgeon with Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan, where in her 40-year tenure as a full professor, she has built a reputation for mentoring and advising students and junior colleagues in surgery.
Excellence in Leadership
An ACS Fellow since 1975, Dr. Ledgerwood has been the President of ACS Michigan Chapter, a member of the Board of Governors, a First Vice-President of the Board of Regents, and the first woman to deliver the Scudder Oration on Trauma (1996).
Additionally, Dr. Ledgerwood also was the first woman to serve as president of the Academy of Surgery of Detroit, the ACS Michigan Chapter, Midwest Surgical Association, The American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and American Surgical Association.
Throughout her career, she has won accolades for excellence in surgery. These include the Nina Starr Braunwald Award from the Association of Women Surgeons, the Trailblazer Award, Lawrence M. Weiner Award, and Munuswamy Dayanandan, MD, Humanitarian Award, all from Wayne State University, and an Honorary Alumna Award from her alma mater, the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
Despite her impressive curriculum vitae, Dr. Ledgerwood remains humble. When asked about her feelings on winning the Inspiring Women in Surgery Award, she offered a few simple words, “I was very honored.”
Advancing Trauma Surgery
Dr. Ledgerwood’s achievements have extended to her entire institution, state, and specialty. The points of pride many cite about the Detroit Receiving Hospital, including its status as a site of education for roughly half of all Michigan physicians and the first Level I trauma center in the state, have been made possible in part by her work.
For example, after witnessing quality improvement efforts at another institution, Dr. Ledgerwood became involved with the ACS Committee on Trauma’s Verification, Review, and Consultation Program at the time of its inception in the mid-1980s. That program has since become the basis for accrediting trauma centers nationwide at levels I through IV, including her own Level I hospital.
In large part because of the design Dr. Ledgerwood and other committee members put in place and sustained, ACS trauma center verification has since been shown to significantly decrease mortality in adult and pediatric patients. Dr. Ledgerwood also noted that the program “has now gone on to be pretty important to quite a lot of hospitals,” in that it has helped inspire the development of quality programs across several other surgical disciplines.
The Inspiring Women in Surgery Award is presented annually at Clinical Congress in recognition of an individual’s contributions to the advancement of women in the field of surgery. The award honors the fortitude and accomplishments of Mary Edwards Walker, MD, the first female surgeon to serve in the US Army and the only female recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
