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and, ultimately, West Chester, Penn- sylvania, where her father, Dr William ... supported by her husband, Dr Robert. Orenstein, and her daughter, Aliya.
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ACG PRESIDENTIAL INTRODUCTION Eamonn M.M. Quigley, MD, FACG1 Am J Gastroenterol 2009;104:4; doi:10.1038/ajg.2008.146

It is my great pleasure, honor, and privilege to introduce the President of the American College of Gastroenterology, Amy E. Foxx-Orenstein, DO, FACG. As your President, Amy has been tireless in her promotion of the mission and goals of the College, has left no stone unturned in her efforts to understand the issues and challenges that face you, its members, and has worked hard to find solutions. Her ability to research, quickly understand, and formulate achievable solutions, always in the best interests of the College and its members, to problems is quite remarkable. Her presidency has also been marked by considerable innovation, as exemplified by the initiative on obesity, the re-convening of the IBS Task Force, and her efforts on behalf of the everincreasing numbers of women in gastroenterology. These are but a few of her achievements. Amy Foxx-Orenstein was born in Ohio but soon moved to Philadelphia and, ultimately, West Chester, Pennsylvania, where her father, Dr William Foxx, established his medical practice and where Amy was to spend most of her childhood and adolescence. Her college life began back in Ohio at the College of Wooster, but she subsequently transferred to the University of Arizona, where she graduated with a BS in 1981 and subsequently undertook postgraduate work in endocrinology. Next came medical school at the University of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences/College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery, Des Moines University, in

Des Moines, Iowa, which was followed by an internship at Oakland General Hospital, Michigan, and a residency in internal medicine at the Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, Pennsylvania. Her move to Richmond, Virginia, to a fellowship in gastroenterology at the Medical College of Virginia– Virginia Commonwealth University was to prove decisive in shaping her future career in gastroenterology and with the ACG. While in Richmond, Amy not only completed a further fellowship in nutrition and was the first Wilson-Cook Pancreatico-Biliary Fellow at that institution, but she performed seminal work under the tutelage of the gastrointestinal physiologist Dr Jack Grider as an NIH research fellow on mechanisms responsible for the peristaltic reflex and intestinal transit and developed an interest in gastrointestinal motility that persists to this day. In Richmond, she was also mentored by Dr Alvin Zfass, an ACG stalwart, who not only played a leading role in shaping her clinical career but guided her toward the College. It came as no surprise that Amy went on to become the first woman gastroenterologist on the MCV faculty and helped establish there a center in clinical gastrointestinal motility disorders. Amy’s next move was to the northern Midwest, to the Mayo Clinic, where she is now an associate professor, a consultant in the division of gastroenterology and hepatology, and a member of the motility, esophageal, and endoscopy interest groups, the Enteric Neuroscience Program (ENSP), and the Clinical Enteric

Neuroscience Translational and Epidemiological Research center (CENTER). She is a much admired clinician and a successful, NIH-funded investigator in the area of motility and, more recently, in the role of the gastrointestinal tract in the pathogenesis and management of obesity. She has also assumed a number of administrative roles at Mayo, including serving as a member of the outpatient practice committee and chair of the task force on improved patient understanding. Amy Foxx-Orenstein has been a most active, loyal, and enterprising servant of the ACG and has been a member of the Board of Trustees since 2002, including a term as Treasurer. She has been a member of the Constitution and Bylaws and National Affairs committees and served as Chair of the ACG’s Women in Gastroenterology Committee, the Patient Care Committee, and the Abstract Review Subcommittee for Outcomes Research. Throughout this busy year, as throughout her career, Amy has been loyally supported by her husband, Dr Robert Orenstein, and her daughter, Aliya. Family life is extremely important to Amy, and one cannot but marvel at her ability to maintain such a wonderful balance between her clinical and research duties, her College commitments, and her family. It gives me great pleasure, therefore, to ask your President, Amy Foxx-Orenstein, clinician, investigator, administrator, and most loyal of College servants, to address you.

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National University of Ireland, Cork, Ireland

The American Journal of Gastroenterology

Volume 104 | January 2009 www.amjgastro.com