As a child, Wayne A. I. Frederick was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia and spent a lot of time in the hospital. At times in so much pain, he begged his mother and doctors to amputate the limb that was hurting him.
His mother worked as a nurse and he watched her change patients’ dressings and take their temperature. These experiences ignited his interest in medicine. In his earliest memory, he was riding a tricycle with his grandmother. He was three years old. “I rode off and came back and said to her I was gonna become a doctor to find a cure for sickle cell.”
Frederick went to Howard University, the prestigious historically Black college, which had a sickle cell center and "was the only place that my mother would be comfortable sending a 16-year-old who was 5 feet, 6 inches, 88 pounds.” At 22, he graduated with a bachelor’s and a medical degree. In 2014, he was named Howard’s 17th president and he also serves as the university’s distinguished Charles R. Drew Professor of Surgery.
Frederick, who also has an MBA from Howard, focuses his research on closing racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in cancer outcomes. As an educator and a physician, he is a passionate advocate for quality education. He has published widely and has received numerous awards and honors, including the Lowell F. Hawthorne Foundation’s first-ever Educator Award and the Diaspora Public Diplomacy Leadership Award from the embassy of Trinidad and Tobago. In 2017, he was named “Washingtonian of the Year” by Washingtonian magazine.
"Black students and alumni have a depth of capabilities and diverse passions and ambitions,” Frederick wrote for CNN. “They leave our campuses eager to work hard and ready to change our industries, our society and our world for the better. All they need is an opportunity."
