Special Guests
Verda Hicks, MD
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Verda J. Hicks is a gynecologic oncologist with almost 30 years of full-time experience at private and employed practices in Kansas City. After holding faculty positions at both the University of Kansas and University of Missouri-Kansas City, she closed her career as director of gynecologic oncology for a Healthcare Corporation of America hospital system in Kansas City, followed by a similar position in the Hackensack Meridian health system in New Jersey. She continues to work a local locum tenens position.
Throughout her career, Dr. Hicks has been an active committee and board member for ACOG and other professional organizations, including the Society of Gynecologic Oncology, ASCCP, and American College of Surgeons. She received the ACOG Distinguished Service Award and an FBI award for her work to identify and bring to justice a Kansas City pharmacist who diluted chemotherapy and other patient medications. She also served as chair of District VII and in other leadership roles.
Dr. Hicks’ academic career is filled with professional presentations and publications, with the majority of her work centered on preinvasive vulvar, vaginal, and cervical disease. Her additional training includes certification of business in medicine from Johns Hopkins University, leadership training at the Cefalo College at the UNC School of Medicine, and physician leadership graduate of Mo Kasti.
Dr. Hicks has benefited from her family’s encouragement and support throughout her career, and she thinks of ACOG members as part of her family, too.
Carla Pugh, MD
Keynote Speaker
Carla Pugh is Professor of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also the Director of the Technology Enabled Clinical Improvement (T.E.C.I.) Center. Her clinical area of expertise is Acute Care Surgery. Dr. Pugh obtained her undergraduate degree at U.C. Berkeley in Neurobiology and her medical degree at Howard University School of Medicine. Upon completion of her surgical training at Howard University Hospital, she went to Stanford University and obtained a PhD in Education. She is the first surgeon in the United States to obtain a PhD in Education. Her goal is to use technology to change the face of medical and surgical education.
Her research involves the use of simulation and advanced engineering technologies to develop new approaches for assessing and defining competency in clinical procedural skills. Dr. Pugh holds six patents on the use of sensor and data acquisition technology to measure and characterize hands-on clinical skills. Currently, over two hundred medical and nursing schools are using one of her sensor enabled training tools for their students and trainees. Her work has received numerous awards from medical and engineering organizations. In 2011 Dr. Pugh received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Barak Obama at the White House. She is considered to be a lead, international expert on the use of sensors and motion tracking technology for performance measurement. In 2014 she was invited to give a TEDMED talk on the potential uses of technology to transform how we measure clinical skills in medicine. In April 2018, Dr. Pugh was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Sydney Thomas
Special Guest
TikTok star, social media personality, and online content creator who is known for posting lifestyle and college-themed content through lip-sync and dance performances, as well as college updates and mini vlogs with her friends and roommates. She went viral in November 2024 after she was the ring girl during the Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul boxing match.
She studied at the University of Alabama. She shared her experience of trying to be in a sorority.
One of her most viral TikTok videos (with over one million views in total) is a video of her and her college friends dressed as cowgirls and lip syncing. Her TikTok account, which operates under the handle iamsydneythomas, has garnered over 1.1 million followers.