Susan McKenzie, 1964
B.A., Denison University
M.A., Stanford University
M.D., University of California, San Francisco
Medical Director
Electronic Data Systems Corporation
San Francisco
Citation awarded May, 2009
Susan has demonstrated professional and personal excellence and leadership qualities across the board. At Denison, she was an excellent student and a leader in many areas of college life. She was president of her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, as well as president of her dorm. In fact, one nominator says she “rose to the top in every facet of college life.”
Susan’s decision to enroll in medical school at the age of 31 was extraordinary for her gender and her time. By doing so, she help to set standards and open up pathways for countless women who followed her and who are today, as is she, an accepted and ever-expanding segment of the medical profession.
Susan is Board Certified by the American Board of Preventive Medicine in Occupational Medicine and is licensed to practice in California and New Mexico.
As a physician, Susan has served on the cutting edge of occupational and environmental medicine. Whether treating low-income patients in a clinical setting in New Mexico, designing occupational health programs for miners exposed to radium, or developing innovative and common-sense approaches in the field of workers’ compensation, she has excelled. She is also a consulting physician with such wide-ranging clients as the Raychem Corporation (Menlo Park, Calif.), Miners’ Hospital (Raton, N.M.), and the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Susan joined the Industrial Medical Council in 1992 as Associate Medical Director. She was named Director in 2002 and now runs an agency with extensive physician regulatory and licensing duties, as well as substantive mandates to improve the quality of medical care in the California workers’ compensation system.
Susan has volunteered in the schools where her children attended, chaired a School Site Council and curriculum committee for their Woodside, Calif. school, initiated a successful program to hire subject-matter experts as consultants, and judged several local elementary and high school Science Fairs. She also helped operate a hot-lunch program that benefited Stanford’s Children’s Hospital.
