FAMU Alumna Becomes Vanderbilt’s First Black Woman Neurosurgery Resident in University’s 90 Year History

Tamia Potter is the first Black woman neurosurgery resident at Vanderbilt University’s medical center in Nashville, Tennessee.

Earlier this month, Potter received the news on National Match Day, when thousands of medical graduates learn where they will do their residency.

Potter told CNN that she was shocked and excited to be starting the next phase in her life at the university.

“Everything that I’m doing, everything that I’m learning, everything that I experience is for the betterment of someone else,” Potter said.

According to the most recent statistics from the Association of American Medical Colleges, only 5.7% of physicians in the United States identify as Black or African American.  In 2018, only 33 Black women worked in neurosurgery in the US.

My first job was a certified nursing assistant at 17 years old in 2014.

Today on March 17th, 2023 I was blessed to be selected as the first African American female neurosurgery resident to train at @VUMC_Neurosurg .#Match2023 #Neurosurgery #BlackGirlMagic pic.twitter.com/4tizYmzDpB

— Tamia Potter (@PotterTamia) March 17, 2023

Potter is making history as the first Black woman to work in neurosurgery at Vanderbilt in 91 years.  According to Dr. Reid Thompson, professor and head of the university’s Department of Neurological Surgery, Vanderbilt trained its first neurosurgery resident in 1932.

Thompson said that when Potter visited the school last summer, he and his colleagues were impressed by her “brilliance and love for neurosurgery.”

In 2018, Potter graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.

Potter will attend Case Western Reserve University Medical School to finish her studies before heading to Vanderbilt University.

She told CNN: “A lot of people feel like when you go to an HBCU, you are sacrificing quality, and that is something that people should not believe.