Cheryl A. Maurana, PhD, was named Honorary Alumna of the Year. Dr. Maurana serves as Senior Vice President for Strategic Academic Partnerships, Professor of Population Health, and Founding Director of the Kern National Network for Caring and Character in Medicine. For the last 27 years, she has been one of MCW's most effective thought leaders, ambassadors, and representatives.

Dr. Maurana joined MCW in 1995 to direct the statewide Area Health Education Center program. She founded MCW’s Center for Healthy Communities and served as the first MCW senior associate dean for public and community health. As the founding director of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment, a beneficiary of Wisconsin’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield conversion, at MCW, she led the investment of $275 million in more than 475 initiatives focused on community health improvement, research, and health workforce education. In 2007, she developed and launched MCW’s PhD in public and community health, the first in the nation. In 2010, she served as the founding director for the Institute for Health and Society, now the Institute for Health and Equity.

Dr. Maurana served as the founding director of the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education and the Kern National Network for Caring and Character in Medicine. The Kern Institute is dedicated to transforming faculty, students, and curriculum within MCW and beyond. The Kern National Network focuses on fostering culture and systems change in medical education and the practice of medicine. She continues to lead the Network, expanding its growth beyond the seven founding members (Dartmouth, Mayo, Vanderbilt, UCSF, UT Austin, UW Madison and MCW). Total giving to MCW from the Kern family and the Kern Family Foundation for the institute and network now stands at $87.9 million, including a $37.9 million investment in 2017 that originally launched the Kern Institute and the Kern National Network. Most recently the Kern Family Foundation renewed its support with a $50 million gift to MCW. This gift designates $10 million as a matching opportunity to inspire additional support.

In 2019, Dr. Maurana led a strategic campaign that promotes gender equity through fostering change in systems and social norms. This campaign, IWill MCW, emphasizes the power of individual responsibility for positive change. The MCW/Marquette Medical Alumni Association is profoundly grateful to Dr. Maurana for the impact she has had and will continue to have as MCW pioneers pathways to a healthier world. We are so thrilled to welcome Dr. Cheryl A. Maurana as an Honorary MCW Alumnus.

Sachin C. Patel, MD '06, PhD '04, was named the Graduate School Alumnus of the Year.

Dr. Patel trained in clinical psychiatry at Vanderbilt where he also continued his research training in translational neuroscience. He joined the faculty at Vanderbilt where he rose to the James G. Blakemore Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and director of the Division of General Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Dr. Patel is now the Chair and Lizzie Gilman Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Services at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and psychiatrist-in-chief at Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Norman and Ida Stone Institute of Psychiatry.

An internationally recognized expert in the field of psychiatric neuroscience, Patel is a respected physician-scientist who combines a deep background in cellular, molecular and behavioral neuroscience with clinical expertise in psychiatry and addiction medicine.

Dr. Patel is also a prolific scientist: he has published many peer-reviewed papers, books, chapters and review articles in journals including Biological Psychiatry, Nature Neuroscience and Neuron, and amassed nearly 6,000 citations. He has consistently secured grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and numerous foundations for his work studying the biology and pathophysiology of the endocannabinoid system. We are so pleased to honor Dr. Sachin C. Patel with this award.

Anna M. Ledgerwood, MD '67, was named the Medical School Alumna of the Year. 

As a clinician, researcher, and teacher, Dr. Anna Ledgerwood has forged a remarkable journey. She was one of three women in the 1967 graduating class of Marquette University School of Medicine, MCW’s predecessor institution. Her first exposure to Surgery was during her third year of medical school while a student on Dr. Edwin Ellison’s Blue Surgery Service at the Milwaukee County General Hospital. Dr. Ledgerwood matched for a rotating internship at Detroit General Hospital followed by a residency in General Surgery at Wayne State University where she was recruited as a faculty member and continues there today. She has been at the forefront of the development of the specialty of trauma surgery – partnering with Dr. Charles Lucas at Detroit Receiving Hospital to provide emergency surgical care for decades. Together, they developed groundbreaking techniques in resuscitation from hemorrhagic shock, instituting clinical trials in the care of patients with traumatic injuries.

Dr. Ledgerwood has made significant contributions to academic surgery as a leader in the profession. She has served as a Governor and First Vice-President of the American College of Surgeons. She was elected President of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma in 1998 and in 2014 was the first woman to be selected President of the American Surgical Association, one of the oldest and most prestigious professional surgical organizations in the country.

Since graduating from our medical school fifty-five years ago, Anna Ledgerwood has provided unwavering compassionate care to patients with the most complex surgical diseases and severe traumatic injuries. She has been an inspirational educator for generations of students of surgery, advancing the art and science of the profession at a pace and intensity unmatched by few others. We are so pleased to honor Dr. Anna M. Ledgerwood with this Award.