“Dr. Vivian Pinn is a living legend in women’s health, and we are very pleased that she is our first honorary member,” said NAMS Executive Director Margery L S Gass, MD, NCMP. “Her contributions to women’s health and her promotion of greater career opportunities for women in science and medicine have had a tremendously beneficial impact. She has been an enthusiastic supporter of NAMS for many years.” The honorary NAMS membership is the latest in a long line of “firsts” in Dr. Pinn’s illustrious career as a clinician, researcher, and healthcare policy leader.

Dr. Pinn knew she wanted to be a physician from an early age even though women doctors—not to mention women doctors of color—were nearly unheard of in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she grew up during the 1940s and 1950s.

After attending segregated public schools in Virginia, she earned a scholarship to Wellesley College and then entered medical school at the University of Virginia, where she was the only woman and the only African American in her 1967 graduating class. She completed her residency in pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital while serving as a teaching fellow at Harvard Medical School.

Next came faculty appointments at Tufts University School of Medicine in 1970 and at Howard University College of Medicine in 1982, where she became the first African American woman to chair an academic pathology department in the United States.

In 1991, she was named the first full-time Director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) at the National Institutes of Health, a position she held for 2 decades until her retirement at the end of August 2011.

As ORWH Director, Dr. Pinn tracked and reported the percentage of women participants in medical research and noted the neglect of women’s health issues in healthcare policy making. She played a key role in putting these gender disparities—as well as healthcare disparities for racial and ethnic minorities—on the national agenda. She focused attention on the importance of sex-specific differences in disease development and in responses to treatment interventions. She also vigilantly tracked the state of women’s health research and led efforts to set research priorities.

Dr. Pinn effectively directed ORWH efforts toward the goal of increasing women’s ranks in the leadership of research and academic institutions. Although more women are entering science and medicine than ever before, Dr. Pinn believes that a gender “leadership gap” still lingers. One example of her efforts to close that gap is a reentry program at ORWH that allows scientists who interrupted their careers for family responsibilities or other reasons to reestablish themselves in their fields.

In addition to her many notable achievements, Dr. Pinn’s greatest legacy may be the inspiration she gave to others.