Nadja West
Lieutenant General (retired) Nadja West is the 44th US Army surgeon general and former commanding general of US Army Medical Command. She is the Army’s first African American woman three-star general and the highest-ranking woman to graduate from West Point. As commanding general of MEDCOM, Ms. West led an organization of more than 130,000 health care professionals. She was the first woman division surgeon for the 1st Armored Division; the first woman joint staff surgeon, in which role she advised the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and the first African American—man or woman—confirmed by the Senate as the Army’s surgeon general. Ms. West was named one of Washington’s Most Powerful Women in Washingtonian Magazine and won the Daughters of the American Revolution Margaret Cochran Corbin Award, Essence Magazine‘s Armed Forces Medical Advocate Award, and George Washington University’s Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award. She holds an honorary degree of doctor of public service from George Washington University and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Methodist University. Ms. West is a Hauser Leader at Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, a board member for Americares, Nucor, and Tenet Healthcare, and a National Recreation Foundation trustee. She graduated from George Washington School of Medicine and completed residencies in family medicine and dermatology.
