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Q&A with Amanda Williams '92, MD, MPH
Amanda Williams ’92, MD, MPH, is a physician, clinical innovator, OBGYN, and women’s health advocate. At Reunion weekend this past spring, Williams received NCS’s Outstanding Professional Achievement Award.
What kind of work do you do?
The big umbrella description of my work is that I focus on optimizing health care delivery for people across the reproductive spectrum, especially during their pregnancy journey. For 17 years, I did that via direct patient care as a board-certified OBGYN. I also served as the director of maternity services in the East Bay of Northern California for 10 years with Kaiser Permanente. I eventually rose in the organizational leadership ranks until I was overseeing pregnancy care for all of Northern California Kaiser—around 44,000 births per year and 15 different hospitals. I was able to have quite a bit of reach in terms of how we designed policies and programming for pregnancy and postpartum care.
I recently left Kaiser Permanente and have taken that same body of work and funneled it more into systems and advocacy. I still have a small clinical slice, but the biggest bulk of my time is at the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative at Stanford University where I recently joined the adjunct faculty. We put programming and workflows into hospitals all over California to prevent maternal morbidity and mortality and to decrease the disparities in maternal health outcomes.
I also advise digital women’s health entities to bring a clinical lens and a health equity focus to products or care delivery models that are being brought to market.
Describe your work as a “clinical innovator.”
We need to see pregnant and postpartum people in the context of their lives and consider their mental health, neighborhoods they live in, access to food, and ability to get medical care. The programming and structures, what are known now as the social or structural determinants of health, are actually just as important as clinical care. When I’m talking about clinical innovations, I’m thinking about how we can give care that sees people more fully and that integrates these different kinds of partnerships to really lead to health optimization.
What drew you to this work?
What drew me to OBGYN is actually quite connected to my NCS past. I often tell people I went to a girls’ school, and I had a mom who was an incredible advocate for women, so I was almost destined to be an OBGYN. I always sat with this concept front and center that women are not treated the same way men are in our society. This sort of hush-hush attitude towards health, particularly reproductive health, hurts people. When I was in medical school, the thought of helping women during this transformative time of their lives and having an opportunity for advocacy really seemed like the best fit for me.
I went to public health school at the same time as medical school and learned that there’s a lot more to people’s health than what happens in the doctor’s office. There is a social context, a political context, a legal context, and we see that clearly right now with the Dobbs decision. From the very onset, I knew that while direct clinical care was important to me, looking at programming and policy was also going to be a part of my career.
It has been awesome caring for women one by one, but now I need to start stretching my wings and really think more about populations and broader contexts.
What about this work motivates you and what keeps you coming back to it?
I just did an interview for a local radio show, and described it as follows, “This is my jam. This is what I do. This is what I feel like I am on this planet for.” My number one life goal is to raise my sons to become contributing members of society who propagate and standup for our core values, but right behind that is to improve women’s healthcare. It’s not just my work. I feel like it is part of my purpose.
How did NCS prepare you for your career?
People often ask me, “What gave you this drive for advocacy, for excellence, for health?” So much of it is about NCS and that unshakeable confidence the school instills, reminding us that the voices of women and girls matter. Having that ingrained in you at a very young age is powerful in terms of one’s career development.
As many of my colleagues were learning how to step up, I had to learn how to step back and how to create space for other people’s voices. While it has been a lot of work, I’d rather have that burden than the opposite, for sure. Now I look at my niece, who is a fourth grader at NCS, and I think about what a gift it is that her parents have decided for her to have this journey as well.
I stay very thankful and connected to NCS because I know that’s where I learned who I could be. That’s where I learned how to write. That’s where I solidified my values around what it means to stand up for oneself and for women in particular. I remain grateful.
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What kind of work do you do?
The big umbrella description of my work is that I focus on optimizing health care delivery for people across the reproductive spectrum, especially during their pregnancy journey. For 17 years, I did that via direct patient care as a board-certified OBGYN. I also served as the director of maternity services in the East Bay of Northern California for 10 years with Kaiser Permanente. I eventually rose in the organizational leadership ranks until I was overseeing pregnancy care for all of Northern California Kaiser—around 44,000 births per year and 15 different hospitals. I was able to have quite a bit of reach in terms of how we designed policies and programming for pregnancy and postpartum care.
I recently left Kaiser Permanente and have taken that same body of work and funneled it more into systems and advocacy. I still have a small clinical slice, but the biggest bulk of my time is at the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative at Stanford University where I recently joined the adjunct faculty. We put programming and workflows into hospitals all over California to prevent maternal morbidity and mortality and to decrease the disparities in maternal health outcomes.
I also advise digital women’s health entities to bring a clinical lens and a health equity focus to products or care delivery models that are being brought to market.
Describe your work as a “clinical innovator.”
We need to see pregnant and postpartum people in the context of their lives and consider their mental health, neighborhoods they live in, access to food, and ability to get medical care. The programming and structures, what are known now as the social or structural determinants of health, are actually just as important as clinical care. When I’m talking about clinical innovations, I’m thinking about how we can give care that sees people more fully and that integrates these different kinds of partnerships to really lead to health optimization.
What drew you to this work?
What drew me to OBGYN is actually quite connected to my NCS past. I often tell people I went to a girls’ school, and I had a mom who was an incredible advocate for women, so I was almost destined to be an OBGYN. I always sat with this concept front and center that women are not treated the same way men are in our society. This sort of hush-hush attitude towards health, particularly reproductive health, hurts people. When I was in medical school, the thought of helping women during this transformative time of their lives and having an opportunity for advocacy really seemed like the best fit for me.
I went to public health school at the same time as medical school and learned that there’s a lot more to people’s health than what happens in the doctor’s office. There is a social context, a political context, a legal context, and we see that clearly right now with the Dobbs decision. From the very onset, I knew that while direct clinical care was important to me, looking at programming and policy was also going to be a part of my career.
It has been awesome caring for women one by one, but now I need to start stretching my wings and really think more about populations and broader contexts.
What about this work motivates you and what keeps you coming back to it?
I just did an interview for a local radio show, and described it as follows, “This is my jam. This is what I do. This is what I feel like I am on this planet for.” My number one life goal is to raise my sons to become contributing members of society who propagate and standup for our core values, but right behind that is to improve women’s healthcare. It’s not just my work. I feel like it is part of my purpose.
How did NCS prepare you for your career?
People often ask me, “What gave you this drive for advocacy, for excellence, for health?” So much of it is about NCS and that unshakeable confidence the school instills, reminding us that the voices of women and girls matter. Having that ingrained in you at a very young age is powerful in terms of one’s career development.
As many of my colleagues were learning how to step up, I had to learn how to step back and how to create space for other people’s voices. While it has been a lot of work, I’d rather have that burden than the opposite, for sure. Now I look at my niece, who is a fourth grader at NCS, and I think about what a gift it is that her parents have decided for her to have this journey as well.
I stay very thankful and connected to NCS because I know that’s where I learned who I could be. That’s where I learned how to write. That’s where I solidified my values around what it means to stand up for oneself and for women in particular. I remain grateful.
