Ginger Campbell

I was born in 1955 in Seattle, Washington but I have lived in Alabama for over 40 years. In 2007 my husband, Dennis Smith, and I will celebrate our 30th anniversary. He also gets to retire from University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he has taught electrical engineering since 1977. As a child my first love was sports, especially softball and basketball. I learned to play tennis when I was 12 and my first sports heroe was Billie Jean King. My other sports heroes are Pat Head Summitt and the pioneers of the US Women's National Soccer team. I didn't play any sports in college where I was one of 4 women in my engineering school class. I did play softball and basketball while I was in medical school and I ended up spending 3 years teaching biomedical engineering at UAB before completing my residency training in family practice. Despite a few short attempts at private practice I have spent most of my medical career doing emergency medicine in small rural hospitals in Alabama. I had to quit playing softball when I had my first hip replacement in 1987. After a second surgery in 1992 I was able to resume playing tennis for several years. I had to take about 4 years off because I got a stress fracture and had to have a 3rd surgery in 2002. Now I try to stay on softcourts, but I still love to play tennis more than about anything else. In 2006 I started 2 podcasts: The Brain Science Podcast and Books and Ideas. My long-term goal is to launch a new career so that I can retire from emergency medicine.