Perry Initiative, Fall 2024

[Title Card] Shriners Children's Northern California logo

Amanda Whitaker, M.D., Orthopedic Surgeon:

Hello, my name's Amanda Whitaker, and today we're here with the Perry Initiative. What the Perry Initiative is, it's a program for high school students as well as medical students to introduce them to engineering and orthopedic surgery. And it's so important because both of these fields, engineering and orthopedic surgery, really have a very, very low number of women. Having a specialty that's so underrepresented it's hard for young people to see others that are doing it to say, hey, I want to do that too. So we're here today to show young people that women are also orthopedic surgeons and engineers, and doing all the things, even if it is a male-dominated field.

Speaker 2:

My name's Amelia and I'm here at the Perry Initiative. It teaches young women and girls about orthopedic surgery. And it totally worked, I [inaudible 00:01:04] into orthopedic surgery even more now because it showed me that girls, women can do this. We really get in there and work with our hands like we did casting, we did sutures. There's a lot of heavy work, we used a drill and a saw, but it was really cool and it made it seem doable.

Amanda Whitaker:

By giving back to our community. It's also helping to fuel the next generation of saying, hey, I can do this too. And also I want to give back to Shriners and to our kids in our community.

[Title Card] Shriners Children's Northern California logo