— Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, revealing the message he gives his three daughters, in an interview for a CNN special “The Person Who Changed My Life,” aired on January 24. The two people who Dr. Gupta says changed his life were both women.
His mother, a refugee from Pakistan, became the first woman hired in the United States as an engineer at the Ford Motor Co.
His professional mentor was Karin Muraszko, a pediatric neurosurgeon and the first woman to ever become a chair of neurosurgery in the United States, at the University of Michigan. Dr. Muraszko was born with spina bifida, yet chose a profession where she would spend long hours standing in the operating room.
Gupta relates the story that on the same day Muraszko decided to become a neurosurgeon, she had her ears pierced because “she didn’t want to lose sight of the fact that she was a woman first, and a neurosurgeon second.”