Canady has remarked that she dislikes being famous or receiving attention. Dr. Alexa Irene Canady (1950 to present) is most famous for breaking down barriers after becoming the first Black neurosurgeon in the United States in 1981. She is such a renowned figure in the neurosurgery community that when Doximity ran a profile in November 2020 about the first female chief of an academic neurosurgery department, readers wrote . "The greatest challenge I faced in becoming a neurosurgeon was believing it was possible," she is famously quoted. Her first declared major was math, but she soon came to realize that she lacked the zeal for the subject that she witnessed in her fellow students. When I got a residency in neurosurgery, I got it not because Im smarter than somebody forty years ago, but because the politics were such that they needed a black woman and I was there and qualified, Canady said in Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed the World. While initially she was worried about how she would be received by her peers, she quickly gained admiration for being a patient-care focused surgeon. [6] Knowing that gaining a residency as a black student would be difficult, Canady began building her rsum, reading many articles and attending every conference and seminar she could, sometimes asking questions just to get known in the small field. In this post, we highlight Dr. Alexa Irene Canady. Did You Know That Iota Phi Thetas Mike City Produced I Wish by Carl Thomas? In 1984, Canady was certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery, another first for a female African American. Accepted into Michigans College of Medicine, she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honorary Medical Society and graduated with a cum laude distinction in 1975. Nothing works without everybody. The Word Search includes 28 Total Hidden Words related to Dr. Canady's work! After completing her residency at the University of Minnesota in 1981, she became the first black woman to become a neurosurgeon. Traveling Exhibits | Corewell Health Alexa Irene Canady became the first African-American woman to work as a neurosurgeon.