Celebrating Women in Medicine Month: Five Physicians to See at the 2026 Women in Medicine Summit

September is Women in Medicine Month. Below are five physicians speaking at this year's Women in Medicine Summit™ in Chicago. Each of them has built something — a program, a practice, an academy, a movement — on top of an already demanding clinical career.

If you are heading to the Summit, these are the sessions and the women worth finding. Their work is worth following either way.

Gwendolyn Williams, MD, SFHM, FACP

Dr. Gwendolyn Rowena Williams is a hospital medicine physician and assistant professor of medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Health, where she also serves on the MCV Physicians Wellness Task Force.

She spent more than nine years at Sentara Health, where she made history as the first female President of the Medical Executive Committee and Chief of Staff at Sentara CarePlex Hospital. Her leadership work has advanced gender equity, physician wellness, and moral courage in medicine — including securing paid parental leave for physicians and building programs to address moral injury and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A first-generation American of Indo-Caribbean heritage, she speaks and writes on leadership development, ethical decision-making, clinician wellbeing, and advancing women in medicine. She is a recipient of the Society of Hospital Medicine's Unsung Hero Award and serves as a board member of Project NANA, advocating for seasoned women's health and cancer prevention.

Wendy Schofer, MD, FAAP, DipABLM

Dr. Wendy Schofer is a pediatrician, lifestyle physician, and certified coach, and the founder of Family in Focus® — a program and podcast for parents worried about weight, food, and body image in their families.

Her approach is size-inclusive and trauma-informed, focused on eating disorder prevention and on helping parents build healthier lifelong relationships with food, body, self, and family, without shame and without harm. Her career has ranged from military medicine to locums, children's hospitals to community nonprofit, and now entrepreneurship.

Dr. Naomi Lawrence-Reid, M.D.

Dr. Naomi Lawrence-Reid is a board-certified pediatrician, educator, and keynote speaker, and the founder of Doctoring Differently®, a nationally recognized digital academy and physician community that teaches doctors how to build flexible, innovative careers beyond traditional full-time clinical practice.

She left a large health system after realizing, as she puts it, that the job had stopped being doctoring and started being dehumanizing. What she built instead spans per diem work, locums, telemedicine, and advisory roles — and she now teaches physicians of every specialty how to do the same, with an emphasis on flexibility, autonomy, and income diversification. She hosts the Doctoring Differently® podcast and is a frequent voice on physician career and burnout conversations.

She is also Era's Physician Ambassador, which we consider a genuine privilege.

At the Summit, her session is “Doctoring Differently: Redesign Your Career Without Leaving Medicine.”

Arpita Gupta DePalma, MD, FAAP, TIPC

Dr. Arpita Gupta DePalma is a pediatrician, co-founder and COO of Virginia iSpine Physicians, and the founder of Thought Work, MD, where she works as a trauma-informed, advanced-certified mindset coach for women physicians and professionals.

She holds certification from The Life Coach School, a trauma-informed professional coach certification through Lodestar, and advanced certification in Deep Dive Coaching. She hosts two podcasts, “From Pissed Off to Poised” and “Doctors Living Deliberately,” both of which are full of practical wisdom drawn straight from her own practice and life.

Robyn Tiger, MD, FACLM, DipABLM

Dr. Robyn Tiger is the Chief Wellness Officer for Women in Medicine® and the founder of StressFreeMD™.

She spent 10 years in medical training and 15 years practicing diagnostic radiology before life-threatening burnout pushed her to find another path. She is now double board-certified in diagnostic radiology and lifestyle medicine, a Fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, a C-IAYT certified yoga therapist, a certified iRest® meditation teacher, and a certified life coach. Through StressFreeMD™ she integrates all of it to teach physicians that while stressors are inevitable, feeling stressed is optional.

About the 2026 Women in Medicine Summit

The Women in Medicine Summit™ runs September 24–26, 2026 at The Drake Hotel in Chicago. It brings together women in medicine and healthcare across every specialty and career stage for work on leadership development, negotiation, advocacy, and professional growth. Registration details are on the Women in Medicine® Summit site, and the full speaker roster and individual bios are worth a scroll. The five women above are a small slice of who is presenting this year, and the rest of the lineup is every bit as strong. Era sponsors the Summit, and we wrote up why we are backing the Women in Medicine Summit.

Find Your People

Era exists because we think physicians should be able to do what they love, on the terms they love. Sometimes that means a permanent job. Often it means building a career out of pieces you choose yourself — which is exactly what several of the women above have done, and what they now teach other physicians to do.

If you are curious what that could look like for you, browse our open locum tenens positions or reach out and let's talk. And if you see us at the Summit, come find us.