Officers and Council Members

Steven J. Fishman, M.D.

is Surgeon-in-Chief and Chair of the Department of Surgery at
Boston Children’s Hospital. He is the Stuart and Jane Weitzman Family Chair in Surgery
at Children’s and the Robert E. Gross Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
He previously served as President of the Physicians’ Organization and Senior Vice-
President for Access and Business Services at Children’s. He co-founded and is Co-
Director of the Vascular Anomalies Center at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Gerard M. Doherty, MD

A graduate of College of the Holy Cross and the Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Doherty completed
residency training at UCSF, including fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. He joined
Washington University School of Medicine in 1993, and became Professor of Surgery in 2001.
From 2002-2012, he was the Norman Thompson Professor of Surgery at the University of
Michigan. From 2012 to 2016, Dr. Doherty was the Utley Professor and Chair of Surgery at
Boston University and Surgeon-in-Chief at Boston Medical Center before becoming the Moseley
Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School where he is also the Chair of Surgery for the
Mass General Brigham system.

Dr. Doherty was trained in surgical oncology, and has focused mainly on surgical diseases of the
thyroid, parathyroid, endocrine pancreas and adrenal glands as well as management of Multiple
Endocrine Neoplasia syndromes. His bibliography includes over 400 peer-reviewed articles,
reviews and book chapters, and several edited books.

He currently serves as Past-President of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons, the
International Association of Endocrine Surgeons, and the Society of Surgical Chairs, Treasurer of
the International Society of Surgery, Reviews Editor of JAMA Surgery, and Editor-in-Chief of
AccessSurgery.

Christopher Muratore, MD

is a Clinical Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at the Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. As the Chief of Pediatric Surgery at Boston Medical Center, Dr. Muratore provides strategic leadership to optimize surgical care, promote clinical quality, and ensure health equity for all pediatric patients.

Before joining BMC, Dr. Muratore served as the Knapp-Swezey Professor and Surgeon-in-Chief
at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. He also previously directed the pediatric surgery fellowship
at Hasbro Children’s Hospital and The Alpert Medical School of Brown University. A graduate of
Georgetown University School of Medicine, he completed his general surgery residency at Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a pediatric surgery fellowship at Boston Children’s
Hospital.

Dr. Muratore’s clinical expertise spans pediatric general, thoracic, trauma, and critical care
surgery. His research is dedicated to advancing fetal surgery, extracorporeal life support
(ECMO), and congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) treatments, alongside a deep commitment
to child advocacy and health policy.

Alik Farber, MD, MBA

is the Associate Chief Medical Officer for Surgical Services and Chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at Boston Medical Center.  He is a Professor of Surgery and Radiology at Boston University School of Medicine.

Dr. Farber is a graduate of Brown University and obtained his medical degree from Harvard Medical School.  He completed a residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, a vascular surgery fellowship at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and an endovascular surgery fellowship at the Southern Illinois School of Medicine. He received his MBA at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

Dr. Farber’s clinical and research interest is in treatment of peripheral arterial disease.  He was a National Co-Chair of the National Institutes of Health-sponsored Best Endovascular versus Best Surgical Therapy in Patients with Critical Limb Ischemia (BEST-CLI) trial, a randomized, controlled trial recently completed at 150 sites across North America, Europe and New Zealand.

F. Thurston Drake, MD, MPH

is an Associate Professor of Surgery at the Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. Dr. Drake is Chief of Endocrine Surgery and the Robert M. Beazley Scholar in Surgical Science at Boston Medical Center.  He serves on the editorial boards of Surgery and Journal of Surgical Research, and is co-chair of the Trainees and Career Advancement Committee of the American Thyroid Association.

Dr. Drake earned an AB in English Literature from Princeton University, his MD from the University of Utah School of Medicine, and an MPH from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. He trained in General Surgery at the University of Washington Medical Center and completed a fellowship in Comprehensive Endocrine Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Drake serves as a Commander in the United States Navy Reserve Medical Corps.

Justin S. Heidel, MD, MEng is a General Surgery resident at Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center in Boston, MA, and a Clinical Fellow of Surgery at Harvard Medical
School.

Currently, he is the Jack Mitchell Thoracic Surgical Oncology Research Fellow at Mass
General Brigham / Brigham and Women’s Hospital. A native of Kentucky, he earned his
BS and MEng degrees in biomedical engineering from the University of Louisville. He
then graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine as a member of
both the AΩA and Gold Humanism Honor Society

Dr. Mele graduated from Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy. She completed her surgical training and a breast surgical oncology fellowship at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. She is the director of the Hoffman Breast Center at Mount
Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA.