Tolu Kehinde is a board-certified anesthesiologist and former global anesthesiology fellow at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN. A Nigerian native and graduate of Mayo Clinic’s anesthesiology residency program, as well as Dartmouth’s MD-MBA program, she is deeply committed to African agency and advancement. 

 

     She is currently focused on increasing access to safe anesthesia globally, efforts that have won her several awards including the 2022 Barbara Bush Distinguished Fellowship Award and the American Society of Anesthesiologists Resident Humanitarian Service award. Some of her other professional experiences include anesthesia education and medical simulation training in Kenya and Liberia, assessing vaccination policy implementation at the Rwandan Ministry of Health, exploring the future of senior living in America, and through an internship at African Leadership Academy in South Africa, creating the vision for the Academy’s healthcare network, ALforHealth. 

 

 Over the course of her career, Tolu hopes to contribute to building robust African healthcare systems and furthering African development in as many ways as present themselves. Tolu is also a firm believer in the transformative power created at the intersection of medicine and the humanities. She enjoys writing, theater, woodworking and herbal tea. Her debut editorial work, Human: Voices of Tomorrow’s Doctors, on the psychosocial implications of medical training, was published in the fall of 2019. Her poetry film, The Abiyamo Film, which explores the complexities of daughter-mother relationships, debuted at the Blackness Is...Arts Festival in Minneapolis, MN in May 2021. 

 

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