Samantha F. Butts
Assistant Professor of Obstetrics
and Gynecology
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Health System
Philadelphia, Penn.
Age: 38
Samantha F. Butts, M.D., quotes Benjamin Franklin’s statement “Well done is better than well said.” Considering her background in medicine and its requisite scholarship, clinical research, publications and lectures, Dr. Butts should be applauded both for what she has done and said.
Winning an essay contest on the meaning of apartheid “was a big part” of her personal development. “I…got to travel to Zimbabwe for the first time as part of the award. I learned a lot about global injustice on the trip.” She graduated cum laude from Harvard College and earned a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a master’s in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She has been an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Hospital of U Penn since 2005, and serves as an attending physician there, providing gynecological care, overseeing clinical research and supervising the medical education of students and physicians in training. Her commitment to women’s reproductive health stems from the circumstances of her birth. “I am one of triplets and from an early age acquired an appreciation for the complexity and risk involved in pregnancy and the delivery process,” she says.
Beyond those roles, Butts is the senior adviser for H.E.A.L.T.H. for Youth, a nonprofit founded by her sister Heather. She won a 2011 departmental and national faculty award for excellence in resident education and a grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the role of environmental exposures on female fertility and menopause. She has traveled extensively and proudly recalls serving on a multidisciplinary team to perform reparative obstetrical surgeries in Eritrea, Africa.
Fun Facts
Countries visited: Morroco, Czechoslovakia, Scotland
Last Movie: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Favorite book: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
