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GRAVITAS MAGAZINE GravitasMag.com | 47 Continued page 48 Catherine M. Lynch, MD Associate Vice President, Obstetrics and Gynecology, USF Morsani College of Medicine I mpressive and eloquent, Dr. Catherine M. Lynch, 51, is precise with her words as she reflects back on her remarkable career, both in academia administration and medicine. Married to Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn for 15 years, she has a poised yet comfortable personality. She cares not just for her patients, but also about her community, her family that includes two daughters, Grace and Colleen, and the legacy she will leave behind. While she has built an impressive career in her own right, she is also a fierce advocate for women in medicine. She was instrumental in launching the first Health Sea Grant campaign to support funding for the USF Morsani College of Medicine. Lynch also champions young girls to learn about medicine and STEM opportunities through an annual career philanthropy day. While Lynch has delivered over 10,000 babies during her career, even more interesting is that she also helped deliver several primates at Busch Gardens. Here in her own words, Lynch tells us how she stayed ahead of her male colleagues in residency, the benefits of the new downtown medical school, and the most important thing she hopes her daughters will remember about her work. Tell me how you first got started in medicine and where that led to your "aha" moment. I've oen said that as far back as I can remember, I always said I wanted to go into medicine. I do still vividly recall my mom pick ing me up from nurser y school and saying , "I'm going to the hospital and I need to get my womb out." She seemed so happy with the idea that I thought it was a good thing to take out people's wombs. Probably the biggest influence was my father who was an internal medicine physician. I saw what he did and thought that that was something worth pursuing. How did your father's career in medicine affect the family and what did you learn om him? As I grew up, my exposure to what he did in the office and at the hospital increased. I grew up in Delray Beach, which, at the time was a pre y small town of about 8,000. We'd be going to church on Sunday and some people would come up to him and say to us, "Your dad saved my wife's life last week ." As we got older, we'd be up sneak ing watching "Creature Feature" on Saturday night and dad would be on call. e phone would ring and we would wait to see if he was going in or going back to bed? If he was going in, he would always come down and get a glass of milk or something from the k itchen. If we thought he was going in, we would watch for the lights progressing towards the k itchen. Did any of your siblings follow in Dad's footsteps? I am the youngest of five children. My oldest sister has her MBA and is a

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