On Jul. 13, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Regina Benjamin, MD, a family doctor in the shrimping village of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, to be U.S. Surgeon General. Dr. Benjamin served as the 18th U.S. surgeon general from 2009 to 2013 and is the first African American woman to become president of the state medical society of Alabama.

Dr. Benjamin earned an M.B.A. degree in 1991. The same year she was selected for the American Medical Association’s “Unsung Hero Campaign”. In 1995 she was named a “Person of the Week” on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and in 1997 she received the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. She was interviewed by People magazine in the article “Always On Call,” in May, 2002 and was the subject of an “Everyday Heroes” feature in the January 2003 issue of Reader’s Digest.

Among numerous professional and volunteer memberships and honors, Dr. Regina Benjamin has received more than $11 million in research support. She served on the American Medical Association’s Women in Medicine Panel from 1986 to 1987, and was president of the American Medical Association Education and Research Foundation from 1997 to 1998.