Women leaders in medicine: Pull up a seat

AAFP President Jen Brull, MD, FAAFP, left, and President-elect Sarah Nosal, MD, FAAFP, pause for a photo before advocating for family medicine on Capitol Hill.

Sept. 9, 2025

There will be at least one historic first when the AAFP Congress of Delegates convenes Oct. 4-6 in Anaheim, Calif.

When Jen Brull, MD, FAAFP, rotates from president to Board chair and President-elect Sarah Nosal, MD, FAAFP, is installed as the Academy’s new president, it will mark the first time in the AAFP’s nearly 80-year history that women have held those two spots at the same time. Nosal will be the Academy’s fourth female president in six years.

September is Women in Medicine Month, so AAFP News recently asked women on the Academy’s Board of Directors about the women who shaped their training, careers and leadership paths. Here is the first of three posts on what they shared.

When I think about a woman who significantly influenced my career, Carla Phipps, MD, immediately comes to mind. Carla was my first real exposure to family medicine during medical school. When I met Carla, I was convinced I wanted to be a pediatrician. I even structured my third-year schedule to take pediatrics in the spring, so I’d know more and look smarter. That choice meant I started the academic year with family medicine, a rotation I thought would be a gentle introduction to clinicals.

On my first day with Carla, we cared for patients with chronic conditions, did well-child visits and removed a small mole. (I nearly passed out because of an unwise choice to wear a long-sleeved shirt in July.) We also raced to the hospital to deliver a baby. By the end of that day, I knew I was meant to be a family doctor. Family medicine offered me the opportunity to take care of kids, their parents and their grandparents. It was the whole human experience.

Carla made that clear not just through the variety of her practice but in how she approached it. She was inspiring, showing me that you could have fun, connect meaningfully with patients, and do excellent, comprehensive care all at once. Watching her work taught me that loving your job and doing it well weren’t mutually exclusive.

I’ve carried that lesson throughout my career. It’s a big part of why I’m a family physician today, and why I’m so grateful for mentors like Carla who showed me what is possible.

—AAFP President Jen Brull, MD, FAAFP

I was not sure what to expect the first time the New York AFP sent me to Kansas City. I can tell you now that this is where it was all happening—the National Conference of Constituency Leaders.

NCCL is the leadership stomping grounds training family physicians, specifically women; new physicians; international medical graduates; physicians who are Black, indigenous or people of color; and LGBTQ+ physicians and allies. In my business casual and signature Doc Martens, I was the NYSAFP LGBTQ+ delegate—part of a full five-person delegation representing each of the constituency groups from our state at this national meeting. We would caucus, write policy and socialize with the leadership from our NYSAFP and other chapters from around the country.

When I came back to New York for our chapter’s Congress of Delegates, I was hyped with skills and passion—ready to take on the challenges of leadership and advocacy. I knew I would be running for the NYSAFP Board of Directors.

Entering that boardroom as a newly elected NYSAFP director for the first time, I did a long look around the table. There were only two other women among the many white men, and all were nearly 20 years my senior. To be clear, the whole room was generally welcoming to a young queer woman with a lot of ideas who had already started the NYSAFP Facebook page (whether they wanted it or not). They let me run with a lot of new ideas.

But those two women would do more and spent the next 15 years serving as my mentors and inspiration. They taught me to look for who was not in the room and not yet sitting at that table. When we were at a commission meeting or cluster they would ask “Who do we need to develop? Who’s next?” They were teaching me the unspoken etiquette of leading in a community of physicians. They included me in developing the vision of where we were going from day one—even if that meant the focus of that vision needed to change.

There were curmudgeons, of course, and people who said, “But we have always done it this way.” But there was power in these women mentors asking, where do we need to go, and how do we do it while growing, changing and welcoming those different than ourselves and moving forward to a place we do not yet know but ought to be?

Soon I will be back in our AAFP Board room. Though our table is wide, long and much more diverse than that first board table many years ago, I will remember to look not merely at who is in the room, but who is outside our doors, who needs their voice to be heard and who should pull up a seat.

—AAFP President-elect Sarah Nosal, MD, FAAFP