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Dr. Carmella Fernandez, a board-certified and dual-fellowship-trained orthopaedic surgeon, grew up in Bridgewater, New Jersey, as a first-generation American. “My dad came to this country with no education and worked manual labor jobs, and in the evening he would clean doctors’ offices,” she says. When Fernandez was 8, her father became ill. “I spent five years in and out of hospitals with him,” she says. The early exposure piqued her interest in medicine. Her father passed away from a brain tumor when she was 13, and for years, she watched her mother toil night and day to eke out a living for the family. “I learned how to be resilient and persevere through the difficult times,” she says.   Her parents taught her the value of hard work in her studies, her personal life and as an athlete. For 18 years, Fernandez trained as a gymnast, competing at the University of Illinois, where she was team captain. Her gymnastics career was temporarily halted with an elbow ligament tear when she was 19. Seeing her doctors at work inspired her to pursue a career in orthopaedics—a field run mostly by men, with about 5.3 percent of orthopaedic surgeons being women (the lowest number of any specialty).   After receiving her bachelor’s from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Fernandez was one of the first graduates of the combined MBA/MD program at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Rutgers-Camden Business School. “It has been an uphill battle being a minority in the field of orthopaedic,” she says. After fellowships in plastics hand and microsurgery, and orthopaedic upper extremity surgery, Fernandez opened her practice six years ago. Her office focuses on the hand, wrist and elbow, treating issues like carpal tunnel and arthritis with custom plans to help patients live pain-free.   Fernandez takes a lesson from her parents and puts it in her practice: Treat others the way you want to be treated. “My team is the foundation of my success, and having my own practice, I can assure they are well cared for,” she says. —Emily Flournoy 

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