Johns Hopkins neurosurgeons Judy Huang and Shenandoah Robinson are the first women to lead prominent professional associations in their field — the Neurosurgical Society of America and the American Academy of Neurological Surgery, respectively. Fellow neurosurgeon Jordina Rincon Torroella asks them to reflect on their experiences and what it means to take on these roles.
Hello, my name is Doctor Jordana Rincon Torella and I'm an assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. It's a privilege for me to work every day with my two colleagues who are sitting next to me, both professors of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. Doctor Shenandoah Robinson, who is an accomplished neurosurgeon scientist and doctor Judy Juan, who is a devoted clinician educator in October 2023. Doctor Robinson became the president of the American Academy of Neurological Surgery, the first ever woman to serve in that leadership role since its establishment and earlier in June, Doctor Huang, president of the Neurosurgical Society of America, two of our fields, living professional associations each with elected membership. It's an honor for me to talk with them today about, about their experience working in the field of neurosurgery. So let's jump in when you entered the field of neurosurgery. If someone had told you, Doctor Robinson that you would be named the president of the Academy and you Doctor Huang, that you would be the president of the NSA, what would you have said? I would have been in complete disbelief at the time that I was entering the field. I didn't even see anybody that looked like me. So, let alone to imagine that I would be in a leadership position is pretty incredible actually. And not something I would have imagined possible. Yeah, I would completely agree with that. I think we're very lucky to be neurosurgeons. It's one of the most rewarding things that you can do, but it also does require some dedication and commitment and a long time to train. And so it's good to look around and get to know the field before you commit to it. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely very clear that there have been a lot of trailblazers before us. And so it's a path that's been followed by many, many people ahead of us. And so there's always advice that we can get from people who have come before us. And then I think a lot of people have learned lessons along the way and anybody can really benefit from tapping into lessons that have been learned. Yeah, every step of my career, I've had great mentors and what are some things about neurosurgery that excite you now? Oh, so many things, I think neurosurgery is an incredibly technology, heavy field. And so there are lots of advances that happen really at a mind blowing speed and it's looking at new ways of understanding disease, like what you're doing, what Dr Robinson is doing in terms of research, I'm trying to understand how diseases happen and how best to treat them. And then the technology is there to give us tools to treat diseases that were previously difficult to treat. And so there's a lot of new technology and new investigation that happens. I completely agree. I think every subspecialty area of neurosurgery has just completely exploded with new technology, new instrumentation and techniques for spine, new options for treating epilepsy with various technologies and expanding who we can treat. So, you know, I think it's just a very exciting time to be in neurosurgery and it will continue to be. So I also think that in our quest for getting better and better at what we do in terms of outcomes, I think that there's a tremendous push towards decreasing invasiveness of the surgeries that we do and that has taken off in the field of vascular in particular. And then, you know, it's definitely existing in spine and other things where we are able to perform surgeries more safely with shorter recovery times and all these are for the benefit of our patients. Well, thank you so much. We are all very excited of having you as president of this very well known neurosurgical societies. Thank you. Thanks Jin. Thank you.
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