American Thyroid Association® Announces 2024-2025 Officers and Board of Directors
The ATA announces with pleasure that Jacqueline Jonklaas, MD, PhD, a Professor of Endocrinology at Georgetown University Medical Center, began a one-year term as President at the close of the 93rd Annual Meeting on November 3rd in Chicago, Illinois. Secretary Christopher McCabe, PhD; Treasurer, Anthony N. Hollenberg, MD; and Past President, Michael McDermott, MD, continue as officers of the ATA. Joining the Board of Directors this year as officers are President-Elect, M. Regina Castro, MD and Treasurer-Elect, Mark Zafereo, MD.
“I am honored to contribute to the society that has been my professional home for so many years by serving as its current President,” said Jacqueline Jonklaas, MD, PhD.
The 16-member Board will also have three new directors, Elizabeth Grubbs, MD, Cari Kitahara, PhD, and Maya Lodish, MD, and two trainee observers, Kharisa Rachmasari, MD, and Freddy Toloza Bonilla, MD. Congratulations to all!
ATA thanks the Nominating Committee, chaired by Martha Zeiger, MD, and the members with a desire to serve in leadership, including those nominated and those who ran for election. And ATA recognizes the service of the members who are rotating off the Board of Directors this year: Amy Chen, MD, Aime Franco, PhD, Celeste Hart, MD, Sareh Parangi, MD, Mona Sabra, MD, Julie Ann Sosa, MD, Martha Zeiger, MD, Brandon Moretti, MD, and David Toro-Tobon, MD.
Officers
President
Jacqueline Jonklaas, MD, PhD is Professor of Endocrinology at Georgetown University. Her area of particular interest is hypothyroidism and thyroid cancer. Dr. Jonklaas enjoys dividing her time between research, clinical activities, and teaching. Dr. Jonklaas has published research regarding treatment and outcomes in patients with thyroid cancer. She has also studied therapy for hypothyroidism and was the co-lead of the ATA’s 2014 guidelines for the treatment of hypothyroidism. She participates in translational research and is the director of the Georgetown Clinical Research Unit.
Dr. Jonklaas has been a member of the ATA since 1999, serves on the editorial board of the journal Thyroid®, and recently completed a term as ATA Secretary. She was Co-chair of the ATA Task Force on Thyroid Hormone Replacement and Co-chair of the inaugural Guidelines and Statements Committee. Being a member of the ATA has been an integral and invaluable part of Dr. Jonklaas’ professional development.
President-Elect
M. Regina Castro, MD is Professor of Medicine, and Consultant in Endocrinology & Metabolism at Mayo Clinic, Rochester where she currently serves as the Director for the Endocrinology fellowship program. She is a clinician, educator, and clinical investigator. Her main areas of interest include the evaluation of patients with thyroid disorders, especially thyroid nodules and thyroid cancer.
Dr. Castro has been an active member of the ATA since 2000, serving on multiple committees: Board of Directors (2014-1028), Patient Affairs and Education Committee (Chair, Co-chair), Website Advisory Committee, Editorial Board of Clinical Thyroidology® for the Public, Trainees & Career Advancement Committee, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force (Co-chair) and the Publications Committee. As Chair of the Patient Affairs and Education committee she led the effort to develop bilingual patient education materials and to organize the Annual ATA Patient Forum. She has participated in multiple ATA meetings as a speaker, 2018 Program Co-chair, and recipient of the 2023 Distinguished Service Award. She also served as Women in Thyroidology (WIT) President and Past President (2019-2021) and received the WIT Woman of the Year Award (2022).
Treasurer-Elect
Mark Zafereo, MD, is Professor of Head and Neck Surgery at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, where he is Section Chief of Head and Neck Endocrine Surgery and Associate Medical Director of the Head & Neck Center. His clinical practice and research focuses on patients afflicted with thyroid cancer and parathyroid neoplasms, particularly multidisciplinary care of patients with advanced thyroid cancer, wherein he leads several national multicenter clinical trials on neoadjuvant therapy followed by surgery.
Dr. Zafereo has served on multiple ATA committees and task forces, including the Internet Communications Committee; the Leadership Strategic Planning Retreat; the Surgical Affairs Committee (currently Chair); the Education and Outreach Task Force, the Spring Meeting Program Committee, and the Medullary Thyroid Cancer Guidelines Task Force. He also serves on the Editorial Board and as an Associate Editor for Thyroid®.
Directors
Elizabeth Grubbs, MD is Professor and Surgical Endocrinologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She also serves as Director of Faculty Academic Career Development for the institution’s 2000+ faculty members and Co-faculty Director of its Leadership Institute. Dr. Grubbs specializes in the surgical treatment of both benign and malignant conditions of the thyroid. She is the founder of the Medullary Thyroid Cancer Collaborative Registry (MTCCoRe), a multi-institutional effort.
Dr. Grubbs has been an active member of the ATA since 2012. She served as the Program Committee Co-chair for the Centennial 2023 ATA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the writing taskforce for the Differentiated Thyroid Cancer Guidelines and a past member of both the Surgical Affairs and Trainee and Career Advancement Committees. She serves as the ATA liaison to the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons.
Cari Kitahara, PhD, MHS, is a Senior Investigator in the Radiation Epidemiology Branch of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Kitahara leads multidisciplinary research programs focused on thyroid cancer etiology and survivorship and radiation-associated health risks to medical staff and patients. Her work, including nearly 200 peer-reviewed publications and six book chapters, provides rigorous and high-quality evidence to inform cancer prevention efforts, radiation protection practices, and patient care.
Dr. Kitahara has been an active member of the ATA since 2018, serving on the Public Health Committee in 2020 and the Program Committee from 2020-2023. She joined the Editorial Board of the journal Thyroid® in 2018 and continues in that role. She was the 2019 recipient of the ATA’s Van Meter Award.
Maya Lodish, MD, MHSc, holds the Selna L. Kaplan Chair as Distinguished Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology and Division Chief of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California San Francisco. Her research interests are in the endocrine-related complications faced by survivors of pediatric cancers, as well as in the genetic etiologies of pediatric endocrine tumors. She plays a leading role in several studies to understand the pathophysiology and to improve the clinical care for pediatric patients with endocrine tumors. Dr. Lodish also leads endocrine care and clinical research in the UCSF cancer survivor multidisciplinary clinic, and the Pediatric Hereditary Cancer Clinic.
Dr. Lodish has been an ATA member since 2018 and has served on the ATA Education Leadership Committee (2020-2022).
Kharisa Rachmasari, MD is Assistant Professor at Mayo Clinic, currently transitioning from her endocrinology fellowship at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, to become a consultant at Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse, WI. She is passionate about thyroid disorders, including thyroid nodules, thyroid autoimmunity and thyroid cancer, and has published research in those topics. She has also written review articles in Clinical Thyroidology®.
Dr. Rachmasari completed medical school at Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar, internal medicine residency at New York Presbyterian-Cornell, New York, and a 3-year endocrinology fellowship at Mayo Clinic Rochester, MN. Currently, she is part of the ATA Trainee and Career Advancement Committee, including involvement in the E. Chester Ridgway Trainee Conference.
Freddy Toloza Bonilla, MD, is an adult endocrinology fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. He has several publications on thyroid functional disorders and has served as an ad-hoc reviewer for multiple journals, including Thyroid®.
Dr. Toloza Bonilla attended Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. He completed internal medicine residency at Metrowest Medical Center in Framingham, MA, and two years of clinical research training focused on thyroid functional disorders at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. Since joining the ATA in 2019, Dr. Toloza Bonilla has engaged in numerous educational opportunities. He is committed to enhancing interest in thyroidology among trainees and increasing the number of ATA in-training members.
The American Thyroid Association® (ATA®) is dedicated to transforming thyroid care through clinical excellence, education, scientific discovery, and advocacy in a collaborative community. ATA is an international professional medical society with more than 1,700 members from 70 countries around the world.
The ATA promotes thyroid awareness and information through its online Clinical Thyroidology® for the Public (distributed free of charge to over 12,000 patients and public subscribers) and extensive, authoritative explanations of thyroid disease and thyroid cancer in both English and Spanish. The ATA® website www.thyroid.org serves as a bonafide clinical resource for patients and the public who look for reliable information on the Internet.
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