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Dr. Marci Bowers was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1958. At age four, Marci and her family moved to Oconomowoc, a small town in Southern Wisconsin. She describes her early childhood as “innocent,” “idyllic,” and heavily influenced by her mother’s energy and creativity. When she was fourteen, Marci’s family moved to suburban St. Louis. Although prone to mischief in school, Marci excelled academically and held aspirations of pursuing a medical career.
By the time she graduated from high school, Marci was struggling with her gender identity. Halfway through her sophomore year of college, in search of an interruption to her life, she hitchhiked from Wisconsin to San Diego, California with $200 and a camera. There, she got a job photographing children on Shetland ponies, and witnessed the defeat of California’s nefarious Briggs Initiative, which aimed to criminalize LGBTQ+ teachers. She went on to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and attend medical school at the University of Minnesota, where she was class and student body president. She then completed a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington.
After her residency, Marci practiced in Seattle at the Polyclinic and Swedish Medical Center. Then, in 2003, she moved to Trinidad, Colorado to apprentice with Dr. Stanley Biber, a pioneer in gender-affirming surgery. Through the process of her own transition, Marci became aware of the “exceedingly small” number of people who provide gender-affirming care around the globe; as such, she refers to her transition from obstetrics and gynecology to gender-affirmation surgery as “fulfilling a need.” To date, Marci has completed more than 4500 Gender Affirming Surgeries including nearly 2500 primary vaginoplasties.
In 2010, Marci left Colorado and moved to the Bay Area. In 2013, she was hired by the Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv, Israel to reinvigorate their surgical services. She has since initiated trans surgical education programs at Mt. Sinai, Denver Health, the University of Toronto Women’s College Hospital, Northwell Health, and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. As a pioneer in her field and the first woman worldwide to perform gender-affirming surgery while holding a personal transgender history, Marci’s work has been highlighted through various television and media appearances, including Oprah, CNN, CBS Sunday Morning, and Discovery Health.
Throughout her career, Marci has been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. She is the current president of the World Presidential Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), and she performed their first two “live surgery” vaginoplasties at Mt. Sinai in 2018 and 2019. She has served previous terms on the boards of GLAAD and the Transgender Law Center, and currently serves on the Trevor Project Board of Directors. She continues to advocate for increased access to life-saving care, and her commitment to “roads and bridges and channels of hope” reflects her belief in the power of compassion and empathy in fighting anti-trans extremism. As she says in her interview, “There are kind people in every corner of this country— what I try to do is talk to them and allow them to see the truth.”
