Tracy S. Wang, MD, MPH, is the president of the Society of Asian Academic Surgeons, as well as a professor in the Department of Surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the chief of the Section of Endocrine Surgery within the MCW Department of Surgery.
Welcome to the second edition of The Lotus Scroll! Many thanks to Nancy Cho, MD; Haejin In, MD, MBA, MPH, FACS; and the members of the Communications Committee on bringing this issue to life!
I am honored to have the privilege of serving as the president of the SAAS and am very excited about the upcoming year. The year of 2020 will be not only the Fifth Annual Meeting, but also the 10th anniversary of the society: It was at the 2010 American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress that our founding members embarked on their mission to promote professional development and increase the representation of Asians in leadership roles across academic surgery.
It is a testament to all of our members that we have come so far! In fact, at the 2019 Clinical Congress, our first president, Kenric Murayama, MD, MBA, FACS, was appointed as the inaugural SAAS representative to the ACS Board of Governors.
SAAS has also begun exciting new collaborations and initiatives with other specialty societies, such as the joint reception at the 2019 meeting with the Latino Surgical Society. We now have representatives on the councils of the Association for Academic Surgery and the Association of Women Surgeons and are pleased to announce that the AWS will be cosponsoring one of our 2020-2021 Junior Faculty Visiting Professorships. I hope to continue to develop these relationships in the upcoming year as we are all interconnected and strive for the same goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Finally, as many of you know, we have a new executive director, Heidi Brittnacher, who will be working with the SAAS leadership to achieve our mission. As we welcome Heidi to her new role, I would like to acknowledge her predecessor as executive director, George Yang, MD, PhD. Without George’s incredible dedication and vision, exemplified not only by the annual dim sum lunches during the early years but also his commitment to having an annual meeting focused on science and professional development, we as a society would not exist as we do today.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to me via email at tswang@mcw.edu or via Twitter @tracyswangNYMKE during the upcoming year. I would love to hear from you about your vision for the society!
I hope to see you all in Honolulu in September!
Tracy Wang, MD, MPH
President, Society of Asian Academic Surgeons