Nancy Ascher Biography
Nancy Ascher is an organ transplant surgeon and professor in transplantation. She is the first woman to perform a liver transplant and a former Chair of the UCSF Department of Surgery. She was awarded the Holly Smith Award for Exceptional Service for 2020 by UCSF.
Nancy Ascher Age
She is 71 years old as of 2020.
Nancy Ascher Family – Sister
Nancy has not revealed much about her family but she hails from Detroit, Michigan and was raised alongside three siblings. She has a sister Sheila who passed away three years after Nancy donated a kidney to her.
Nancy Ascher Education
She graduated from the University of Michigan with a medical degree. She completed a general surgery residency and clinical transplant fellowship at the University of Minnesota, where she later joined the faculty and became clinical director of the liver transplant program.
Nancy Ascher Husband
Ascher is married to John Roberts who is also a transplant surgeon. They met at the University of Minnesota where Ascher was on the faculty and John was a transplant fellow. They were both recruited from the University of Minnesota as a package deal in 1988 to start a liver transplant program at UCSF. They got married soon after.
While at UCSF John serves as chief of the UCSF Transplant Service while Ascher served as the Chair of the UCSF Department of Surgery. In 1993, the couple performed the first live adult-to-child liver transplant.
Nancy Ascher Children
Nancy together with her husband has two children together; a daughter Roberts Ascher and a son Ascher Roberts. Nancy has revealed that she went into labor during both pregnancies while she was operating. After delivering her daughter she took a week off from work and only took three days off when her son was born.
Nancy Ascher Surgeon
Nancy is an organ transplant surgeon and an advocate for ending organ trafficking. She has served on the Presidential Task Force on Organ Transplantation, the Surgeon General’s Task Force on Increasing Donor Organs, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation.
Nancy Ascher UCSF
Dr. Nancy Ascher joined the University of California San Francisco Department of Surgery in 1988 where she was recruited to build a liver transplantation program. She was appointed Chief of Transplantation, an expanded role that included liver, kidney and pancreas transplants in 1991. In 1993 she was appointed Vice-Chair of the UCSF Department of Surgery, and in 1999 was appointed Department Chair where she served until September 2016.
Prior to joining UCSF she was a faculty member of the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota in 1982 and was named Clinical Director of the Liver Transplant Program.
Nancy Ascher UCSF Salary
Her actual salary is unknown.
Nancy Ascher The Surgeon’s Cut
Nancy is a star in Netflix’s medical show The Surgeon’s Cut. The show is a medical docuseries where world-renowned surgeons talk about their lives, their influences, how they came to the specialties that they practice, and the groundbreaking procedures they pioneered.
In the show, Nancy revealed that horror films, feminism and an intellectually rigorous family inspired her to take up a career in medicine. She said that she had to do things that required her to overcome her fears which is where horror films came in handy.