The SPA 36th Annual Meeting will be held at the New Orleans Ernest E. Morial Convention Center on Friday, October 21, 2022. The evening reception on Friday, as well as most SPA Section, Committee and SIG meetings will be held at the Westin New Orleans. The newly elected Board of Directors will be formally announced at the meeting. If you haven’t registered what are you waiting for? Take a moment and do it now. https://www2.pedsanesthesia.org/forms/registration/2022annual_register.iphtml
The newly elected members of the Board
Dr. Jina Sinskey is an Associate Professor of Anesthesia at UCSF specializing in pediatric anesthesia. She received her undergraduate degree from MIT and her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine. She completed her internship and residency in anesthesiology at UCSF and her pediatric anesthesiology fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital. She is the inaugural Associate Chair of Well-Being for the Department of Anesthesia at UCSF and serves as Vice Chair of the American Society of Anesthesiologists Committee on Physician Well-Being. She is an Associate Editor for the Pediatric Anesthesia Section of OpenAnesthesia and previously served as the quality improvement lead for the Pediatric Anesthesia Division at UCSF. Prior to pursuing a career in medicine, she worked as a management consultant specializing in marketing strategy. Her approach to clinician well-being leverages her experience in management consulting and quality improvement, where she applies concepts of change management, human-centered design, continuous process improvement, and implementation science to create systems approaches to reduce burnout and foster well-being. Her research interests include clinician well-being, virtual/augmented reality for pediatric patients, conflict management, fetal anesthesia, and medical education.
Dr. Aditee Ambardekar is an Associate Professor at UT Southwestern Medical School and a Pediatric Anesthesiologist at Parkland Hospital and Children’s Health, Dallas. She completed anesthesiology residency at The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and her pediatric anesthesiology fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In 2014 Dr. Ambardekar received her Master’s in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Ambardekar’s area of clinical expertise and research interest is pediatric burn anesthesia. She is also an expert in graduate medical education and simulation-based education. She currently holds the title of Residency Program Director and Distinguished Teaching Professor at UT Southwestern.
Dr. Emmett Whitaker is an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Neurological Sciences, and Pediatrics at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. Dr. Whitaker completed his medical education at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and his anesthesiology residency and fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital. After training, he spent 5 years as an attending pediatric anesthesiologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Currently, Dr. Whitaker splits his time between clinical anesthesia practice and translational science. His lab studies the effects of early-life insults on the development of the brain and cerebral vasculature. Recently, he was awarded a Foundation for Anesthesia Education & Research Mentored Research Training Grant during which he will study the effects of sevoflurane on cerebrovascular autoregulation in neonatal offspring of preeclamptic pregnancies. He has also been heavily involved in SPA over the course of his career, serving on multiple committees and as the Program Chair for the 2021 Annual Meeting. He looks forward to dedicating more of his professional effort to moving out subspecialty forward as a member of the Board of Directors.
Dr. Jamie McElrath Schwartz is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of Delaware and medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. She completed a pediatrics residency and Chief Residency at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, pediatric critical care fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Johns Hopkins Hospital, and anesthesia residency and pediatric anesthesia training at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is board certified in Pediatrics, Pediatric Critical Care, Anesthesiology and Pediatric Anesthesiology. Fun fact: she was a private practice pediatrician for two years before returning to training for critical care fellowship.
Dr. Schwartz’s clinical expertise is in pediatric cardiac anesthesiology and critical care. She was recently recognized for exceptional clinical care with induction to the Johns Hopkins Miller Coulson Academy of Clinical Excellence. She passionate about team building and women’s leadership. She has both academic and clinical leadership roles as Division Chief of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine and Co-Director of the Blalock-Taussig-Thomas Pediatric and Congenital Heart Center at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine/Children’s Center.
Dr. Schwartz was a co-founder of the Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Initiative (WELI) within the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia – an organization that empowers highly productive women pediatric anesthesiologists to achieve equity, promotion and leadership. She serves on the WELI Advisory Board currently.
For a full bio of the new Board members go to
https://pedsanesthesia.org/2022-board-of-directors-candidates/