April 2021 and affirming Black community, but much of her time was spent in a predominantly white elite private school, Sidwell Friends, which was attended by children of Presidents Obama and Clinton. She found her Black community at Stanford, but the majority of her fellow undergraduates were white. The same goes for her medical career, where she often has felt she had to hide parts of herself in order to fit in.
Kia Washington, MD, vice chair of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the Department of Surgery
ON A MISSION
Creating meaningful progress on diversity and inclusion. Greg Glasgow Kia Washington, MD, looks back on her undergraduate experience as four years that helped to shape who she is. One of those years in particular stands out as not just formative, but transformative. As a young Black woman who grew up attending mostly white schools, it was important to Washington to experience more diversity when she went to college. One reason she chose to go to Stanford University in California was the school’s exchange program with Spellman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta. Washington spent one year there.
“It was important to me to have that experience of being in an academic community where I wasn’t the minority,” says Washington, director of research and professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “It was very affirming to have classes where the teachers were all Black women and all the other students in the class were Black women.”
“In certain institutions, it has been hard to have a sense of belonging where I could totally express my authentic self, because I’ve often been the only one,” she says. “Has it been difficult? Yes. Has it been something that’s crushed me or defeated me? No, because of what my parents instilled in me and the awesome educational background I received.” As vice chair of diversity and inclusion in the Department of Surgery at the CU School of Medicine, Washington is now on a mission to radically improve the experience for young doctors from underrepresented backgrounds in medicine, looking to substantially increase their numbers in the department.
Click here to read more about Washington’s mission.
Raised by parents who had moved to Washington, D.C., from the Jim Crow South to attend Howard University, Washington led a double life of sorts as a child — D.C. had a vibrant
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