The Group on Women in Medicine and Science (GWIMS) Leadership Award recognizes outstanding individual faculty and organization contributions to advancing women leaders in academic medicine and science. Since 1995, these prestigious awards have recognized more than 75 individuals and organizations.
Any member of the academic medicine community may nominate emerging and established individuals and organizations for the award. The GWIMS Steering Committee strongly encourages nominations of leaders and programs that have significant impact on advancing women leaders in academic medicine and science.
Award Categories
There are four award categories. Before submitting an application, please fully review all category descriptions. Here are the 2025 Leadership Award winners:
Emerging Individual Leadership Award
Nominee has contributed to the advancement of women in medicine and science for fewer than 10 years of their career.
Maya S. Iyer, MD, MEd, FAAP, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine (OSUCOM) and a Pediatric Emergency Medicine attending at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She serves as the WIMS Director at OSUCOM, where she expanded membership from 40 to more than 280 faculty and developed new programs and initiatives to support gender equity and faculty development. In addition, she is the Assistant Dean for Clinical Faculty, overseeing the professional support of approximately 1,700 faculty members through onboarding, promotion, retention, and policy development. In this role, she has implemented new policies on promotion pathways, streamlined faculty misconduct procedures, developed toolkits for onboarding and promotion, and established OSUCOM’s first Ombuds Office. Additionally, Dr. Iyer has co-founded the Big Ten Academic Alliance CommUNITYten Collaborative, extending her leadership on a national level.
Dr. Iyer has published 31 peer-reviewed articles and two book chapters, in addition to leading national and multi-institutional studies. Her research topics include procedural competency, gender-based bullying in academic medicine, pediatric workforce development, and leadership pathways in medical education. Findings from her work have influenced Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) training standards, informed institutional policies, and been published in high-impact journals such as JAMA Network Open and Pediatrics. She has secured multiple competitive grants as principal investigator, including projects funded by The Physicians Foundation, the ELAM Innovations Fund, and the American Medical Association’s Joan Giambalvo Fund. Her work has been disseminated through invited national presentations, including AAMC conferences, multiple national grand rounds, and an international keynote address.
Dr. Iyer was awarded the 2024 Joan Giambalvo Fund Award from the American Medical Association for her project on allyship and gender equity in academic medicine. She has received support from the ELAM Innovations Fund for her work on gendered pathways to medical school leadership and from The Physicians Foundation for her study on gender-based bullying. She has served as a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University and has delivered presentations of over five national grand rounds.
Established Individual Leadership Award
Nominee has contributed to the advancement of women in medicine and science for 10 years or more of their career.
Lisa Chaudron, MD, MS, is a Senior Associate Dean and Vice President for Inclusion and Culture at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry (URSMD) and University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), roles she has held for a decade. She is also Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine.
At URSMD and URMC, she has overseen major institutional efforts and developed structures, lectures, and offices dedicated to supporting women in medicine and science. Nationally, she has served on the GWIMS Steering Committee from 2014-2020, serving as Chair from 2018-2020, and co-chaired the 2017 joint AAMC GWIMS-GDI conference. She also advised the AAMC Career Development Program for Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers and contributed as faculty in the AAMC’s MIDWIMS program. Additionally, she serves on advisory committees, such as the MaineHealth Women Physician and APP Advisory Committee and has been engaged with leadership development initiatives through ELAM and Executive Leadership in Healthcare programs.
Her academic and programmatic contributions span more than 30 years of sustained advocacy for women in academic medicine and science. At URSMD, she established two structured career development programs—one for early-career and one for mid-career women—demonstrating measurable impact on advancement and promotion, with the mid-career program’s results published in peer-reviewed literature. In 2011, she created the Tana Grady-Weliky, MD Lecture on Women and Diversity in Medicine, which continues as a leading annual lecture at the institution, addressing issues of gender equity and diversity. She has successfully advocated for institutional resources to fund women’s programs and secured philanthropic support to endow the Tana Grady-Weliky Lecture, ensuring the sustainability of initiatives that advance gender equity and inclusion in academic medicine. She has also engaged in extensive research and publication on topics related to women’s career development and advancement in medicine, alongside national and international lecturing. Beyond formal programming, she has consistently provided mentorship and sponsorship for female medical students, trainees, faculty, and staff, broadening her network of mentees across the country.
Dr. Chaudron’s achievements have been recognized with multiple prestigious awards. In 2015, she received the University of Rochester Susan B. Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award for her long-standing efforts to advance women in medicine. Most recently, she was awarded the 2025 American Psychiatric Association Alexandra Symonds Award, which honors female psychiatrists who have made significant contributions to promoting women’s health and advancing women in medicine.
Emerging Organization Leadership Award
The organization has contributed to the advancement of women in medicine and science for fewer than 10 years.
The Muriel Steele Society (MSS) is a Department of Surgery–based organization at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), established in 2018 to advance women in surgery and academic medicine. It is co-chaired by Drs. Mika Varma and Lucy Kornblith and overseen by an executive council of over 50 members, representing all surgical subspecialties at UCSF, including faculty, residents, fellows, and medical students. The society has grown from its original seven founding members to more than 600 members, encompassing women across UCSF surgical specialties and affiliated hospitals. MSS is supported by institutional resources provided by the Department of Surgery, including administrative support, leadership oversight, a discretionary budget, and sponsorship of annual visiting professors. The society also benefits from extramural funding, including a UCSF Community Well-Being Grant and multiple “Getting Together” Faculty/Staff Morale funds, which have enabled programs on visibility, ergonomics, resilience, and burnout prevention.
Since its founding, MSS has developed a broad portfolio of initiatives to support women’s advancement in surgery. Its programming includes seminars on publishing research, navigating promotion processes, excelling at job negotiations, and developing mentorship networks. MSS has created recognition mechanisms such as an Honor Roll and Trailblazing Award, while also sponsoring nominations for local, regional, and national honors. These efforts have resulted in 34 nominations and 13 awardees, with impact documented in Annals of Surgery. MSS supports early-career faculty by sponsoring participation in AAMC leadership programs and has initiated research and policy projects, such as the development of a parenting in surgery program—subsequently published in the World Journal of Surgery—and studies addressing barriers to advancement for underrepresented groups. In addition, MSS regularly hosts national and international women and underrepresented visiting professors, creating networking and visibility opportunities for UCSF trainees, faculty, and students.
MSS has gained recognition both within UCSF and nationally for its contributions to advancing gender equity in surgery. It was selected to host several high-profile visiting professorships, including the Society of Black Academic Surgeons–Association of Women Surgeons Visiting Professor (2024), the American Surgical Association–Association of Women Surgeons Surgical Leaders Fellowship (2025), and the Society of Surgical Oncology Catalyst Visiting Professor (2025). Its community-building efforts are highlighted through a monthly newsletter and social media presence, which disseminate accomplishments and opportunities to members. By leveraging institutional support, external funding, and the enthusiasm of its membership, MSS has created sustainable programs and scholarship that enhance visibility, foster mentorship, and improve professional advancement for women in surgery. Through its comprehensive and structured approach, MSS has established itself as a durable and influential organization for gender equity in academic surgery.
Established Organization Leadership Award
The organization has contributed to the advancement of women in medicine and science for more than 10 years.
The WIMS program at The Ohio State University College of Medicine (OSUCOM) was established in 2014 and has since developed into a formally recognized organization within the Office of Faculty Affairs. Originally launched under the Faculty Advancement, Mentoring, and Engagement (FAME) program, WIMS became independent in 2022, operating with its own budget, a dedicated program manager, and leadership effort supported by 0.2 FTE for the Director and 0.1 FTE for the Associate Director. As of 2025, WIMS has grown to more than 300 faculty members, supported by five constituent committees—Awards, Advocacy, Data, Events, and Media/Communications—and an Outreach arm. Its membership model allows engagement across tiers of committee participation, general membership, and advocate/ally membership, ensuring inclusivity for all OSUCOM faculty. The program is co-sponsored and funded by OSUCOM, with additional philanthropic contributions, and collaborates broadly across the university, medical center, and community to sustain programming and growth.
WIMS has advanced numerous major initiatives with measurable institutional and national impact. Among its most notable achievements is the creation of the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) CommUNITYten Collaborative, established between 2022 and 2024, which convenes leaders from 19 Big Ten institutions to address gender equity in academic medicine and biomedical sciences. This initiative produced the inaugural CommUNITYten Conference in 2024 and subsequent inter-institutional programming, including webinars and an environmental scan of gender-based barriers. In 2023, WIMS launched the Research Accelerator Program to Translate, Innovate, and Commercialize (RAPTIC), which supports faculty in intellectual property development and research productivity, with a focus on mitigating inequities in grant funding and promotion. The first cohort of 25 participants completed RAPTIC in 2024, with outcome measures in progress, and the program has since been expanded university wide. WIMS also contributes to national discourse through presentations at AAMC conferences and Visiting Scholar engagements, with leadership sharing institutional strategies on gender equity and faculty advancement.
WIMS’s sustained institutional and academic achievements are reinforced by a broad set of partnerships and outreach programs. These include collaborations with the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center on leadership assessment tools, with the Alumni Engagement Office on events such as Women in White Coats, and with Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s PediaCastCME and FAME’s FAMECast podcasts to highlight equity-focused programming. WIMS supports faculty participation in AAMC leadership development programs, sponsors events such as Anatomy Outreach Day for local high school students, and engages in community health equity initiatives such as Uplift Her. It has expanded mentoring networks connecting medical students, graduate students, and faculty and developed a Mid-Career Seminar Series to address advancement challenges. Collectively, these efforts position WIMS as an established organization with a record of institutional transformation, intercollegiate leadership, and continued innovation in advancing gender equity and supporting women-identifying faculty in medicine and science.